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In Accorso’s time, it was the fashion with many Latin writers to make use of obsolete words. This he endeavoured to ridicule, and with considerable success, in a dialogue entitled “Osco, Volsco, Romanaque eloquentia interlocutoribus, dialogus ludis Romanis actus, &c.” 1531, 8vo, without place, or the name of the author; but La Monnoie thinks it must have been printed before, as it is quoted by Tori in his “Champ-Fleuri,” which appeared in 1529. At the end of this volume is a small work, entitled “Volusii Metiani, jurisconsulti antiqui distributio. Item vocabula ac notae partium in rebus pecimiariis, pondere, numero, et mensura.” The Dialogue was reprinted at Rome, 1574, 4to, with the author’s name, and with the title of “Osci et Volsci Dialogas ludis Romanis actus a Mariangelo Accursio.” There is another 4to edition, without date or name of the author. In the imperial library of Paris are two editions, both of Cologne, 1598. It appears by the dedication of the fable Testudo, that Accorso was employed on a history of the house of Brandenbourg; but this, and his other works, were lost on the death of his son Casimir, who was a man of letters, and had intended to publish all his father’s works. Toppi, in his Biblioteca Napolet. among other inaccuracies, attributes to Accorso a work entitled “De Typographies artis Inventore, ac de libro primum omnium impresso;” but the mistake seems to have arisen from a few manuscript notices on the subject, written by our author in a copy of Donatus’ grammar, a very early printed book.

, king of Leon and Castile, who has been surnamed The Wise, on account of his attachment to literature, is now more celebrated for having been an astronomer than a king. He was born in 1203, succeeded his father Ferdinand III. in 1252, and died in 1284, consequently at the age of 81. The affairs of the reign of Alphonsus were very extraordinary and unfortunate, but we shall here only consider him in that part of his character, on account of which he has a place in this work, namely, as an astronomer and a man of letters. He acquired a profound knowledge of astronomy, philosophy, and history, and composed books upon the motions of the heavens, and on the history of Spain, which are highly commended. “What can be more surprising,” says Mariana, “than that a prince, educated in a camp, and handling arms from his childhood, should have such a knowledge of the stars, of philosophy, and the transactions of the world, as men of leisure can scarcely acquire in their retirements? There are extant some books of Alphonsus on the motions of the stars, and the history of Spain, written with great skill and incredible care.” In his astronomical pursuits he discovered that the tables of Ptolemy were full of errors, and was the first to undertake the task of correcting them. For this purpose, about the year 1240, and during the life of his father, he assembled at Toledo the most skilful astronomers of his time, Christians, Moors, or Jews, when a plan was formed for constructing new tables. This task was accomplished about 1252, the first year of his reign; the tables being drawn up chiefly by the skill and pains of Rabbi Isaac Hazan, a learned Jew, and the work called the Alphonsine Tables, in honour of the prince, who was at vast expences concerning them. He fixed the epoch of the tables to the 30th of May 1252, being the day of his accession to the throne. They were printed for the first time in 1483, at Venice, by Radtolt, who excelled in printing at that time; an edition extremely rare: there are others of 1492, 1521, 1545, &c.

, a military character, and a man of letters, was born at Bagnacvallo in the kingdom of Naples, about the year 1530, and accompanied the prince of Salerno, general to Charles V. in his expedition against Piedmont. He diverted the fatigues of his campaigns by the study of polite literature, and the cultivation of a poetical taste. His works were, “II Duello,” Venice, 1560, which is a history of celebrated duels, and the laws respecting that remnant of barbarity. “A Discourse on Honour,” 1562, and various poems which have been inserted in collections.

, the son of Candiano Barbaro, was an accomplished soldier and a man of letters. He was a scholar of the celebrated Chrysoloras, under whom he studied Greek and Latin. His character raised him to the highest offices in the republic of Venice, and he acquired great reputation on account of the bravery with which he defended the city of Brescia, when governor, against the forces of the duke of Milan. It was riot less to his credit that he was able to reconcile the two opposite factions of the Avogadri and the Martinenghi, and prevailed on them to support the common cause. He died procurator of St. Mark, in 1454. Rewrote a Latin treatise on marriage, which was published by Badius Ascensius, in Paris, 1513, 4to, entitled “F. Barbari patricii Veneti oratorisque clarissimi de Re Uxoria libelli duo.” It is a work of pure morality, and contains excellent advice, in a very perspicuous style, and has been often reprinted, and translated into French. Barbaro also translated the lives of Aristides and Cato from Plutarch, and his letters were printed at Brescia, 1743, 4to. Bayle has a long note, by which it appears somewhat doubtful, whether the defender of Brescia and the writer of the “De Re Uxoria,” were the same person.

To this character, his biographer adds, that he was chaVitable in the extreme and, like Goldsmith, would divide the last shilling he possessed with a friend in distress. He also kept small money of various kinds in a pocket by itself to relieve distress. He was improvident enough to be always anticipating his income, and spent a good deal of it in post-chaise hire, in travelling through the country. He was no dealer in compliment. Avoiding the practice of it himself, he would not knowingly permit it to be used towards him. He would not receive money from any one, and actually refused 6l. from his brother at a time when he was in want, though he accepted from him some wine and macaroni. Immediately after his death, his legal representatives (for no other persons could be authorised to interfere in so extraordinary a manner) either as executors or administrators burnt every letter in his possession without inspection an instance of gothic precipitation which ignorance itself would blush to avow, and which, with the papers of a man of letters, may be attended with very mischievous consequences. We hope the practice is not frequent. Among these letters were several from Dr. Johnson, which Mr. Baretti a few weeks only before his death had promised to make known to the public and from the value of those that have already been published, the world may form some judgment of their loss. The following is a correct list of Mr, Baretti’s works 1. “A Dissertation upon the Italian poetry in which are inter^ spersed some remarks on Mr. Voltaire’s essay on the epic poets,” 1753, 8vo. 2. “An Introduction to the Italian language,; containing specimens both of prose and verse. Selected from Francisco Redi, Galileo Galilei, &c. &c. &c. With a literal translation and grammatical notes, for the use of those who being already acquainted with grammar, attempt to learn it without a master,” 1755, 8vo,

, the natural son of the subject of the next article, was born at Venice in 1532, during his father’s embassy there, and studied under Ronsard, making particular progress in the Greek tongue. He devoted himself afterwards to French poetry, which he disfigured not a little by a mixture of Greek and Latin words. His object was to give to the French the cadence and measure of the Greek and Latin poetry, in which he was very unsuccessful. Cardinal Perron said of him, that he was a good man, but a bad poet. He set his own verses, however, to music; not, says Dr. Burney, to such music as might be expected from a man of letters, or a dilletanti, consisting of a single melody, but to counterpoint, or music in parts. Of this kind he published, in 1561, “Twelve hymns or spiritual songs;” and, in 1578, several books of “Songs,” all in four parts, of which both the words and the music were his own. In all he was allowed to be as good a musician as a poet; but what mostly entitles him to notice, is his having established a musical academy at Paris, the first of the kind; but m this he had to encounter many difficulties. The court was for it, and Charles IX. and Henry III. frequently attended these concerts; but the parliament and the university opposed the scheme as likely to introduce effeminacy and immorality. The civil wars occasioned their being discontinued, but they were long after revived, and proved the origin of the divertissements, the masquerades, and balls, which formed the pleasures of the court until the time of Louis XIV. Bayf died in 1592. His poems were published at Paris in 1573, 2 vols. 8vo, and consist of serious, comic, sacred, and profane pieces; the first volume is entitled “Euvres en rime,” the other “Les Jeux.” His mode of spelling is as singular as his composition, but the whole are now fallen into oblivion.

, a celebrated French poet, cousin to the Bellays to be noticed afterwards, was born about 1524 at Lire, a town about eight leagues from Angers. Being left an orphan at a very early age, he was committed to the guardianship of his elder brother, who neglected to cultivate the talents he evidently possessed, and although he soon discovered an equal turn for literature and for arms, he was kept in a sort of captivity, which prevented him from exerting himself with effect; and the death of his brother, while it freed him from this restraint, threw him into other embarrassments. No sooner was he out of the care of a guardian himself, than he was charged with the tuition of one of his nephews, and the misfortunes of his family, which had brought it to the brink of ruin, and certain law-suits in which he was forced to engage, occasioned solicitudes and vexations but little suited to the studies he wished to pursue, while a sickness no less dangerous than painful confined him two years to his bed. Nevertheless he courted the muses; he studied the works of the poets, Latin, Greek, and French; and the fire of their genius enkindled his own. He produced several pieces that procured him access to the court, where Francis I. Henry II. and Margaret of Navarre, admired the sweetness, the ease, and the fertility of his vein. He was unanimously called the Ovid of France. The cardinal John du Bellay, his near relation, being retired to Rome, in 1547, after the death of Francis I. our poet followed him thither within two years afterwards, where he enjoyed both the charms of society and those of study. The cardinal was a man of letters, and the hours they passed together were real parties of pleasure. His stay in Italy lasted but three years, as his illustrious kinsman wanted him in France, where he gave him the management of his affairs; but his zeal, his fidelity, and attachment to his interests, were but poorly repaid; some secret enemies having misrepresented him to his patron. His most innocent actions were turned to his reproach sinister meanings were given to his verses; and at length he was accused of irreligion and these mortifications brought on him again his old complaints. Eustache du Bellay, bishop of Paris, moved at his misfortunes, and sensible of his merit, procured him, in 1555, a canonry of his church, which, however, he enjoyed not long; a stroke of apoplexy carried him off in the night of the 1st of Jan. 1560, at the age of thirty-seven. Several epitaphs were made on him, in which he is styled “Pater elegantiarum, Pater omnium leporum.” His French poems, printed at Paris in 1561, 4to, and 1597, 12mo, established his reputation, and are certainly very ingenious; but the author was as certainly neglectful of decorum and the proprieties of his station, and imitated the ancients, not so much in what deserves imitation, as in the liberties they sometimes take. His Latin poems published at Paris, 1569, in two parts, 4to, though far inferior to his French verses, are not destitute of merit.

, an English miscellaneous writer, was born, about 1730, at Leeds in Yorkshire, and educated at the grammar-school in that town. His father, Xvho was a merchant, and a native of Holland, intended him for trade and with that view sent him at an early age to Germany, in order to learn foreign languages. After continuing a few years in that country, he made the tour of Europe in company with one or more English noblemen. On their return to Germany they visited Berlin, where Mr. Berkenhout met with a near relation of his father’s, the baron de Bielfeldt, a nobleman then in high estimation with the late king of Prussia; distinguished as one of the founders of the royal academy of sciences at Berlin, and universally known as a politician and a man of letters. With this relation our young traveller fixed his abode for some time; and, regardless of his original. destination, became a cadet in a Prussian regiment of foot. He soon obtained an ensign’s commission; and, in the space of a few years, was advanced to the rank of captain. He quitted the Prussian service on the declaration of war between England and France in 1756, and was honoured with the command of a company in the service of his native country. When peace was concluded in 1760, he went to Edinburgh, and commenced student of physic. During his residence at that university he compiled his “Clavis Anglica Lingux Botanicæ” a book of singular utility to all students of botany, and at that time the only botanical lexicon in our language, and particularly expletive of the Linnsean system. It was not, however, published until 1765.

Besides his professional merit, Booth was a man of letters, and an author in more languages than one. He had a taste for poetry, which discovered itself when he was very young, in translations from several Odes of Horace; and in his riper years, he wrote several songs and other original poems, which were very far from injuring his reputation. He was also the author of a mask or dramatic entertainment called “Dido and JEneas,” that was very well received upon the stage; but his best performance was a Latin inscription to the memory of a celebrated actor, Mr. William Smith, one of the greatest men of his profession, and of whom Mr. Booth always spoke in raptures. This short elogy has much strength, beauty, and elegance. In his private life he had many virtues, and few of the failings so common to his profession. He had no envy in his composition, but readily approved, and as readily rewarded, merit, as it was in his power. He was something rough in his manner, and a little hasty in his temper, but very open and free to speak his sentiments, which he always did with an air of sincerity, that procured him as much credit with people at first sight, as he had with those to whom he had been long known. He was kind to all the players whose circumstances were indifferent, and took care not to make them uneasy, either in point of salary or of usage. He was no great speaker in company, but when he did, it was in a grave lofty way, not unlike his pronunciation on the stage. He had a great veneration for his parents while they were living, and was also very useful to his brother and sister after their decease. Booth was twice married; first in 1704, to Miss Frances Barkham, daughter of sir William Barkham, of Norfolk, bart. who died in 1710, without issue; and secondly, to Mrs. Santlowe, an actress, who. survived him forty years, and in 1772, erected a monument to his memory in Westminster abbey. In 1737 she married Mr. Goodyer,a gentleman of fortune in Essex.

, a cardinal, was born in 1469, at Cajeta, a town in the kingdom of Naples. His proper name was Thomas de Vio, but he took that of Cajetan from the place of his nativity. He was entered of the order of Dominic, of which he became an illustrious ornament; and having taken a doctor’s degree when he was about twenty-two years of age, he taught philosophy and divinity first at Paris, and afterwards at Rome. He went regularly through all the honours of his order, till he was made general of it; which office he exercised for ten years. He defended the authority of the pope, which suffered greatly at the council of Nice, in a work entitled “Of the Power of the Pope;” and for his zeal upon this occasion, was made bishop of Cajeta. Then he was raised to the archiepiscopal see of Palermo; and in 1517 was made a cardinal by pope Leo X. The year after he was sent a legate into Germany, to quell the commotions which Luther had raised by his opposition to Leo’s indulgences: buJt Luther, being under the particular protection of Frederic elector of Saxony, set him at defiance; and though, in obedience to the cardinal’s summons, he repaired to Augsburg, yet he rendered his endeavours of no effect. Cajetan indeed was the most improper person that could have been selected to oppose Luther, having nothing to advance hut the arrogant dictates of mere authority. He was, however, more advantageously employed in several other negotiations and transactions, being not only a man of letters, but having a peculiar turn for business; and at length died, in 1534, when he was sixty-five years old.

, a man of eminence in many respects, and called by way of distinction “the senator,” was born at Squillace, in Calabria, about the year 4i>7. He had as liberal an education as the growing barbarism of his times afforded; and soon recommended himself by his eloquence, his learning, and his wisdom, to Theodoric king of the Goths in Italy. Theodoric first made him governor of Sicily; and when he had Sufficiently proved his abilities and prudence in the administration of that province, admitted him afterwards to his cabinet-councils, and appointed him to be his secretary. After this he had all the places and honours at his command, which Theodoric had to bestow; and, having passed through all the employments of the government, was raised to the consulate, which he administered alone, in the year 514. He was continued in the same degree of confidence and favour by Athalaric, who succeeded Theodoric, about the year 524; but afterwards, in the year 537, being discarded from all his offices by king Vitiges, he renounced a secular life, and retired into a monastery of his own founding in the extreme parts of Calabria. Here he led the life of a man of letters, a philosopher, and a Christian. He entertained himself with forming and improving several curious pieces of mechanism, such as sun-dials, water clocks, perpetual lamps, &c. He collected a very noble and curious library, which he enlarged and improved by several books of his own composing. About the year 556, he wrote two books “De Divinis Lectionibus;” and afterwards a book “De Orthographia,” in the preface to which he tells us, that he was then in his ninety-third year. There are extant of his twelve books of letters, ten of which he wrote as secretary of state, in the name of kings Theodoric and Athalaric, and two in his own. He composed also twelve books “De rebus gestis Gothorum,” which are only extant in the abridgment of Jornandes; though it has been surmised that a manuscript of Cassiodorus is still remaining in some of the libraries in France. He wrote also a commentary upon the Psalms, and several other pieces, theological and critical. Father Simon has ?poken of him thus “There is no need,” says he, “of examining Cassiodorus’s Commentaries on the Psalms, which is almost but an abridgment of St. Augustin’s Commentaries, as he owns in his preface. But besides these commentaries, we have an excellent treatise of this author’s, entitled < De institutione ad Divinas Lectiones,' which shews, that he understood the criticism of the scriptures, and that he had marked out what were the best things of this nature in the ancient doctors of the church. In the same book Cassiodorus gives many useful rules for the criticism of the scriptures; and he takes particular notice of those fathers who have made commentaries upon the Bible, &c.” It seems generally agreed that he was in all views a very extraordinary man; and we think that those have done him no more than justice, who have considered him as a star, which shone out amidst the darkness of a barbarous age. When he died we cannot precisely determine, but most writers seem to be of opinion this happened in the year 575. His works have been collected and printed several times; the best edition is that of Rohan, 1679, 2 vols. fol. with the notes and dissertations of John Garret, a Benedictine monk. In 1721, Signer Scipio Maffei published a work of Cassiodorus, which had long been missing; and in the following year the same was published at London, by Mr. Samuel Chandler, entitled “Complexions, or short Commentaries upon the Epistles, the Acts, and the Revelation,” which Dr. Lardner has enumerated among the testimonies to the credibility of the gospel history.

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

About this time Dr. Johnson fell into his company, who tells us, that “the appearance of Collins was decent and manly; his knowledge considerable, his views extensive, his conversation elegant, and his disposition cheerful. By degrees,” adds the doctor, “I gained his confidence; and one day was admitted to him when he was immured by a bailiff, that was prowling in the street. On this occasion recourse was had to the booksellers, who, on the credit of a translation of ‘ Aristotle’s Poetics,’ which” he engaged to write with a large commentary, advanced as much money as enabled him to escape into the country. He shewed me the guineas safe in his hand. Soon afterwards his uncle, Mr. Martin, a lieutenant-colonel, left him about 2000l. a sum which Collins could scarcely think exhaustible, and which he did not live to exhaust. The guineas were then repaid; and the translation neglected. But man is not born for happiness: Collins, who, while he studied to live, felt no evil but poverty, no sooner lived to study, than his life was assailed by more dreadful calamities, disease and insanity.“Dr. Johnson’s character of him, while it was distinctly impressed upon that excellent writer’s memory, is here at large inserted:” Mr. Collins was a man of extensive literature, and of vigorous faculties. He was acquainted, not only with the learned tongues, but with the Italian, French, and Spanish languages. He had employed his mind chiefly upon works of fiction, and subjects of fancy; and by indulging some peculiar habits of thought, was eminently delighted with those flights of imagination which pass the bounds of nature, and to which the mind is reconciled only by a passive acquiescence in popular traditions. He loved fairies, genii, giants, and monsters; he delighted to rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the water-falls of Elysian gardens. This was, however, the character rather of his inclination than his genius; the grandeur of wildness, and the novelty of extravagance, were always desired by him, but were not always attained. Yet as diligence is never wholly lost; if his efforts sometimes caused harshness and obscurity, they likewise produced in happier moments sublimity and splendour. This idea which he had formed of excellence, led him to Oriental fictions and allegorical imagery; and, perhaps, while he was intent upon description, he did not sufficiently cultivate sentiment. His poems are the productions of a mind not deficient in fire, nor unfurnished with knowledge either of books or life, but somewhat obstructed in its progress by deviation in quest of mistaken beauties. His morals were pure, and his opinions pious: in a long continuance of poverty, and long habits of dissipation, it cannot be expected that any character should be exactly uniform. There is a degree of want by which the freedom of agency is almost destroyed; and long association with fortuitous companions will at last relax the strictness of truth, and abate the fervour of sincerity. That this man, wise and virtuous as he was, passed always linen tangled through the snares of life, it would be prejudice and temerity to affirm; but it may be said that at least he preserved the source of action unpolluted, that his principles were never shaken, that his distinctions of right and wrong were never confounded, and that his faults had nothing of malignity or design, but proceeded from some unexpected pressure, or casual temptation. The latter part of his life cannot be remembered but with pity and sadness. He languished some years under that depression of mind which enchains the faculties without destroying them, and leaves reason the knowledge of right without the power of pursuing it. These clouds which he perceived gathering on his intellects, he endeavoured to disperse by travel, and passed into France; but found himself constrained to yield to his malady, and returned. He was for some time confined in a house of lunatics, and afterwards retired to the care of his sister in Chichester , where death, in 1756, came to his relief. After his return from France, the writer of this character paid him a visit at Islington, where he was waiting for his- sister, whom he had directed to meet him there was then nothing of disorder discernible in his mind by any but himself; but he had withdrawn from study, and travelled with no other book than an English Testament, such as children carry to the school: when his friend took it into his hand out of curiosity, to see what companion a man of letters had chosen: ‘ I have but one book,’ says Collins, ‘ but that is the best.’ Such was the fate of Collins, with whom I once delighted to converse, and whom I yet remember with tenderness. He was visited at Chichester in his last illness by his learned friends Dr. Warton and his brother; to whom he spoke with disapprobation of his t Oriental Eclogues,‘ as not sufficiently expressive of Asiatic manners, and called them his ’ Irish Eclogues.‘ He shewed them, at the same time, an ode inscribed to Mr. John Hume, ’ On the Superstitions of the Highlands;' which they thought superior to his other works, but which no search has yet found. His disorder was not alienation of mind, but general laxity and feebleness, a deficiency rather of his vital than intellectual powers. What he spoke wanted neither judgment nor spirit; but a few minutes exhausted him, so that he was forced to rest upon the couch, till a short cessation restored his powers, and he was again able to talk with his former vigour. The approaches of this dreadful malady he began to feel soon after his uncle’s death; and with the usual weakness of men so diseased, eagerly snatched that temporary relief with which the table and the bottle flatter and seduce. But his health continually declined, and he grew more and more burthensome to himself. “To what I have formerly said of his writings may bft added, that his diction was often harsh, unskilfully laboured, and injudiciously selected. He alVected the obsolete when it was not worthy of revival; and he puts his words out of the common order, seeming to think, with some later candidates for fame, that not to write prose is certainly to write poetry. His lines commonly are of slow motion, clogged and impeded with clusters of consonants. As men are often esteemed who cannot be loved, so the poetry of Collins may sometimes extort praise when it gives little pleasure .”

A man of letters, and of manners too" &c.

, a learned French writer, was born at Nantes, Dec. 4, 1661. His father, who was a merchant, was also a man of letters, and bestowed much pains on the education of his son, who answered his expectations by the proficiency he made in classical studies. He had, however, provided him with a private tutor, who happened to disgust him by the severity of his manners, and upon this account partly, at the age of fourteen, he desired to take a voyage to some of the West India islands, to which his father traded; but his principal inducement was what he had read in books of voyages, and the conversation of persons who had been in America, all which raised his curiosity to visit the new world. He embarked on board a French ship, with no other books than Erasmus’s Colloquies, and the Gradus ad Parnassum. His passage was not unpleasant, and during his residence at Guadeloupe he borrowed all the Latin books he could discover, and read them with avidity; but the chief advantage he seems to have derived here was an opportunity to learn the English, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese San^uasres. To these he afterwards added an acquaintance with the German, Sclavonic, and AngloSaxon; and studied with much attention the ancient and modern Greek, the Hebrew, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Hebrew, Arabic, and even the Chinese. On his return to Nantes in 1677, he found his father’s affairs somewhat deranged, and was obliged to take a part in the business. Medicine appears to have been first suggested to him as a profession, but he found little inclination for that study; and some conferences he happened to have with the Benedictines of the congregation of St. Maur determined him to enter their society. He accordingly made his noviciate in 1673, and applied himself to the study of theology. In 1682 he formally became a member of the congregation. His residence at Paris, in the abbey of St. Germain des Pres, the vast number of books within his reach, and particularly of manuscripts, increased his knowledge and his thirst for knowledge, and some of his earliest labours were bestowed in preparing materials, collecting Mss. &c. for new editions of the works of St. Clement of Alexandria, and St. Gregory Nazianzen. But these were interrupted by certain differences which occurred in the abbey to which he belonged, and of which we have various accounts. The prior of St. Germain, father Loo, had a great aversion to the study of classical and polite literature, and was for confining the members to the strict religious duties of the house. This could not fail to be disgusting to a man of La Croze’s taste: but, according to other accounts, which seem more prohable, he began to entertain religious scruples about this time (lr.96), which induced him to withdraw himself. It is said that his superiors found among his papers a treatise against transubstantiation in his hand-writing, and which they believed to be his composition; but they discovered afterwards that it uas a translation from the English of Stillingfleet. Some other manuscripts, however, sufficiently proved that he had changed his opinion on religious matters; and the dread of persecution obliged him to make his escape to Basil, which he successfully accomplished in May 1696. Here he renounced the Roman catholic religion, and as his intention was to take up his residence, he was matriculated as a student of the college of Basil. He remained in this place, however, only till September, when he departed, provided with the most honourable testimonies of his learning and character from Buxtorf, the Hebrew professor, and Werenfels, dean of the faculty of theology. He then went to Berlin, where his object was to secure a iixed residence, devote himself to study, and endeavour to forget France. In order to introduce himself, he began with offering to educate young men, the sons of protestant parents, which appears to have answered his purpose, as in 1697 we find him appointed librarian to the king of Prussia; but his biographers are not agreed upon the terms. To this place a pension was attached, but not sufficient to enable him to live without continuing his school; and some assert that he was very poor at this time. The probability is, that his circumstances were improved as he became better known, and his reputation among the learned was already extensive. In June of 1697 he went to Francfort to visit the literati of that place, and their fine library, and visited also Brandenburgh for the same purpose. In November 1697 (or, as Chaufepie says, in 1702), he married Elizabeth Rose, a lady originally of Dauphiny, and thus, adds one of his Roman catholic biographers, completed the abjuration of the true religion. In 1698 he first commenced author, and from time to time published those works on which his fame rests. Soon after he became acquainted with the celebrated Leibnitz, with whom he carried on an intimate correspondence. In 17 13 he went to Hamburgh, where he paid many visits to the learned Fabricius, and in his letters speaks with great warmth of the pleasure this journey afforded; but this year, 17 J 3, was not in other respects a vei'y fortunate one to La Croze, and he formed the design of quitting Germany. He had been appointed tutor to the margrave of Schwel, and this employment terminating in 1714, he lost the pension annexed to it, and was reduced to considerable difficulties, of which he wrote to Leibnitz, as to a friend in whom he could confide. Leibnitz, by way of answer, sent him a copy of a letter which he had written to M. BernsdorfT, prime minister to the elector of Hanover, in his behalf. The object likely to be attained by this interest was a professorship at Helmstadt; but as it required subscription to the articles of the Lutheran church, M. la Croze, notwithstanding the persuasions Leibnitz employed, declined accepting it. His affairs, however, soon after wore a more promising aspect, partly in consequence of a prize he gained in the Dutch lottery. In 1717 he had the honour to be engaged as private tutor to the princess royal of Prussia, afterwards margravine of Bareoth. In 1724, for several months his studies were interrupted by a violent fit of the gravel; and on his recovery, the queen of Prussia, who always patronized La Croze, obtained for him the professorship of philosophy in the French college at Berlin, vacant by the death of M. Chauvin. This imposed on him the necessity of drawing up a course of philosophy, but as he never intended to print it, it is said not to have been executed with the care he bestowed on his other works. In 1713 father Bernard Pez, the Benedictine, made him liberal offers if he would return to the church he had forsaken, but this he declined with politeness, offering the arguments which influenced his mind to remain in the protestant church. In 1739 an inflammation appeared on his leg, which inApril put on appearances of mortification, hut did not prove fatal until May 21. About a quarter of an bour before his death he desired his servant to read the 51st and 77th psalms, during which he expired, in the seventy -first year of his age. He was reckoned one of the most learned men of his time, and was frequently called a living library. So extensive was his reading, and so vast iiis memory, that no one ever consulted him without obtaining prompt information. In dates, facts, and references he was correct and ready. We have already noticed how many languages he had learned, but it appears that he made the least progress in the Chinese, to which Leihnitz, in his letters, is perpetuiiy iirging him. The greater part of his life was employed in study, and he had no other pleasures. There was scarcely a book in his library whicli he had not perused, and he wrote ms notes on most of them. His conversation could not fail to be acceptable to men of literary research, as his memory was stored with anecdotes, which he told in a very agreeable manner. He was conscientiously attached to the principles of the reformed religion. He had always on his table the Hebrew Psalter, the Greek Testament, and Thomas a Kempis in Latin: the latter he almost had by heart, as well as Buchanan’s Psalms. His consistent piety and charity are noticed by all his biographers.

, a fellow of the royal society of London, was born in Auvergne, in France, in 1666, and was the son of a protestant clergyman. He came over in his youth to England, and appears to have led the life of a man of letters, continually employed in composing or editing literary works. In 1720 he was elected F. R. S. and from his numerous letters in the British Museum, appears to have carried on a very extensive correspondence with the learned men of his time, especially St. Evremont and Bayle. He died at London in June 1745. Bayle he assisted with many articles and remarks for his Dictionary, and published his “Letters” at Amsterdam, 1729, 3 vols. 12mo, with a variety of observations, which shew an extensive knowledge of modern literature. He also wrote the life of Bayle, which was prefixed to the edition of his Dictionary published in. 1730, and was reprinted at the Hague in 2 vols. 1732, 12mo. By a letter in the beginning from Desmaiseaux to M. la Motte, it appears that the latter had induced him to undertake this life of his friend. In 1732 he edited Bayle’s Miscellaneous Works in 4 vols. folio, and probably was likewise the author of the “Nouvelles Lettres de Pierre Bayle,” Hague, 1739, 2 vols. 12mo. His intimacy and friendship for St. Evremond led him to publish the life and works of that writer, in 1709, 3 vols. 4to and 8vo, often reprinted and translated into English. He also published the lives of Boileau in French, and of Chillingworth and Hales of Eton in English, which he wrote fluently. For some time it is 'said he was engaged in an English Dictionary, historical and critical, in the manner of Bayle, but no part of it appears to have been published, except the above-mentioned Life of Hales, in 1719, which was professedly a specimen of the intended Dictionary. In 1720 he published some pieces of Locke’s which had not been inserted in his works; and the same year “Recueii de diverses pieces sur la philosophic, la religion naturelle, l'histoire, les mathematiques, &c.” by Leibnitz, Clarke, Newton, and others; Amst. 2 vols. 12mo. He appears likewise to have been the editor of the “Scaligerana, Thuana, Perroniana, Pithoeana, et Colomesiana,” Amst. 1711, 2 vols. Besides these, and his translation of Bayle’s Dictionary, he was a frequent contributor to the literary Journals of his time, particularly the “Bibliotlieque Raisonnæ” and “The Republic of Letters.”

In 1657 we find him at Montpelier; whither he went, partly for the sake of his health, which began to be impaired by severe fits of the stone, and partly for the sake of enjoying the learned society of several ingenious persons, who had formed themselves into a kind of academy there. To- these he read, in French, his “Discourse of the Cure of Wounds by the Powder of Sympathy,” which, was translated into English, and printed at London; and afterwards into Latin, and reprinted in 1669, with “The Treatise of Bodies, &c.” As to the philosophical arguments in this work, and the manner in which the author accounts for the strange operations of this remedy, however highly admired in those days, they will not now be thought very convincing. He spent the year 1658, and part of 1659, in the Lower Germany; and then returned to Paris, where we find him in 16CO. He returned the year following to England, and was very well received at court; although the ministers were far from being ignorant of the irregularity of his conduct, and the attention he paid to Cromwell while the king was in exile. It does not appear, however, that any other favour was shewn him than seemed to be due to a man of letters. In the first settlement of the royal society we find him appointed one of the council, by the title of sir Kenelm Digby, knight. Chancellor to our dear mother queen Mary. As long as his health permitted, he attended the meetings of this society; and assisted in the improvements that were then made in natural knowledge. One of his discourses, “Concerning the Vegetation of Plants,” was printed in 1661; and it is the only genuine work of our author of which we have not spoken. For though the reader may find in Wood, and other authors, several pieces attributed to him, yet these were published after his decease by one Hartman, who was his operator, and who put his name in the titlepage, with a view of recommending compositions very unworthy of him to the public. It may be proper to observe in this place, that he translated from the Latin of Albertus Magnus, a piece entitled “A treatise of adhering to God,” which was printed at London in 1654; and that he had formed a design of collecting and publishing the works of Roo-er Bacon.

On his return to Scotland he found the nation distracted by political and religious disputes, which combined with the same causes in England to bring on a civil war. But why these should oblige him, immediately on his return, to quit his paternal seat, we know not. The author of his Life, prefixed to the folio edition of his works, in 1711, merely informs us, that having found his native country in a state of anarchy and confusion, he retired to the seat of his brother-in-law, sir John Scot of Scotstarvet, a' man of letters, and probably of congenial sentiments on public affairs. During his stay with this gentleman he wrote his “History of the Five James’s,” kings of Scotland, a work so inconsistent with liberal notions of civil policy as to have added very little to his reputation, although when first published, a few years after his death, and when political opinions ran in extremes, it was probably not without its admirers. It is uncertain at what time he was enabled to enjoy his retirement at Hawthornden, but it appears that he was there in his forty fifth year when he married Elizabeth Logan, (grand-daughter of sir Robert Logan, of the house of Restelrig), in whom he fancied a resemblance to his first mistress. About two years before this event, he repaired his house, and placed the following inscription on it: “Divino muncrt Gitlitlmus Drummondus ab Hawthornden, Joannis Equitis aurati filius, ut honesto otio quiescerct, sibi Hf successoribtu instauravit, 1638.”

After about ten weeks’ absence, though Mr. Emlyn received discouraging accounts of the rage that prevailed against him in Dublin, he thought it necessary to return, to his family. Finding that both his opinions and his person lay under a great odium among many who knew little of the subject in dispute, he wrote his “Humble Inquiry into the Scripture account of Jesus Christ: or, a short argument concerning his Deity and Glory, according to the Gospel.” A few days after this work was prinjted, our author intended to return to England; but some zealous dissenters, getting notice of his design, resolved to have him prosecuted. Two of them, one of whom was a presbyterian, and the other a baptist-church officer, were for presenting Mr. Emlyn; but, upon reflection, this method was judged to be too slow, and too uncertain in its operation. Mr. Caleb Thomas, therefore, the latter of the two dissenters, immediately obtained a special warrant from the lord chief justice (sir Richard Pyne) to seize our author and his books. Our author, with part of the impression of his work, being thus seized, was carried before the lord chief justice, who at first refused bail, but afterwards said that it might be allowed with the attorney-general’s consent; which being obtained, two sufficient persons were bound in a recognizance of eight hundred pounds for Mr. Emlyn’s appearance. This was in Hilary term, February 1703, at the end of which he was bound over to Easter term, when the grand jury found the bill, wherein he was indicted of blasphemy. To such a charge he chose to traverse. The indictment was altered three times before it was finally settled, which occasioned the trial to be deferred till June 14, 1703. On that day, Mr. Emlyn was informed, by an eminent gentleman of the long robe, sir Richard Levins, afterwards lord chief justice of the common pleas, that he would not be permitted to speak freely, but that it was designed to run him down like a wolf, without law or game; and he was soon convinced that this was not a groundless assertion. The indictment was for writing and publishing a book, wherein he had blasphemously and maliciously asserted, that Jesus Christ was not equal to God the father, to whom he was subject; and this with a seditious intention. As Mr. Emlyn knew that it would be difficult to convict him of being the author of the work, he did not think himself bound to be his own accuser, and the prosecutor not being able to produce sufficient evidence of the fact, at length sent for Mr. Boyse. This gentleman, being examined as to what Mr. K.mlyn had preached of the matters contained in the book, acknowledged that he had said nothing of tlu-tn in the pulpit directly, but only some things that gave ground of suspicion. Mr. Boyse being farther asked, what our author had said in private conference with the ministers, answered, “that what he had declared there was judged by his brethren to be near to Arianism.” Though this only proved the agreement of the book with Mr. Emlyn’s sentiment, it yet had a great effect upon the minds of the jury, and tended more than any other consideration to produce a verdict against him. The queen’s counsel, having thus only presumption to allege, contended,that strong presumption was as good as evidence; which doctrine was seconded by the lord chief justice, who repeated it to the jury, who brought him in guilty, without considering the contents of the book whether blasphemy or not, confining themselves, as it would appear, to the fact of publishing: for which some of them afterwards expressed their concern. The verdict being pronounced, the passing of the sentence was deferred to June 16, being the last day of the term. In the mean time Mr. Emlyn was committed to the common jail. During this interval, Mr. Boyse shewed great concern for our author, and used all his interest to prevent the rigorous sentence for which the attorney-general (Robert Kochford, esq.) had moved, viz. the pillory. It being thought proper that Mr. Emlyn should write to the lord chief justice, he accordingly did so; but with what effect we are not told. When he appeared to have judgment given against him, it was moved by one of the queen’s counsel (Mr. Brodrick) that he should retract: but to this our author could not consent. The lord chief justice, therefore, proceeded to pass sentence on him; which was, that he should suffer a year’s imprisonment, pay a thousand pounds fine to the queen, and lie in prison till paid; and that he should find security for good behaviour during life. The pillory, he was told, was the punishment due; but, on account of his being a man of letters, it was not inflicted. Then, with a paper on his breast, he was led round the four courts to l>e exposed. After judgment had been passed, Mr. Emlyn was committed to the sheriffs of Dublin, and was a close prisoner, for something more than a quarter of a year, in the house of the under-sheriff. On the 6th of October he was hastily hurried away to the common jail, where he lay among the prisoners in a close room filled with six beds, for about five or six weeks; and then, by an habeas corpus, he was upon his petition removed into the Marshalsea for his health. Having here greater conveniences, he wrote, in 1704, a tract, entitled “General Remarks on Mr. Boyse’s Vindication of the true Deity of our blessed Saviour.” In the Marshalsea our author remained till July 21, 1705, during the whole of which time his former acquaintances were estranged from him, and all offices of friendship or.civility in a manner ceased; especially among persons of a superior rank. A few, indeed, of the plainer tradesmen belonging to his late congregation were more compassionate; but not one of the dissenting ministers of Dublin, Mr. Boyse excepted, paid him any visit or attention. At length, through the zealous and repeated solicitations of Mr. Boyse, the generous interference of Thomas Medlicote, esq. the humane interposition of the duke of Ormond, and the favourable report of the lord chancellor (sir Richard Cox, to whom a petition of Mr. Emlyn had been preferred), and whose report was, that such exorbitant fines were against law, the fine was reduced to seventy pounds, and it was accordingly paid into her majesty’s exchequer. Twenty pounds more were paid, by way of composition, to Dr. Narcissus March, archbishop of Armagh, who, as queen’s almoner, had a claim of one shilling a pound upon the whole fine. During Mr. Emlyn’s confinement in the Marshalsea, he regularly preached there. He had hired a pretty large room to himself; whither, on the Sundays, some of the imprisoned debtors resorted; and from without doors there came several of the lower sort of his former people and usual hearers. Soon after his release Mr. Emlyn returned to London, where a small congregation was found for him, consisting of a few friends, to whom he preached once every Sunday. This he did without salary or stipend; although, in consequence of his wife’s jointure having devolved to her children, his fortune was reduced to a narrow income. The liberty of preaching which our author enjoyed, gave great offence to several persons, and especially to Mr. Charles Leslie, the famous nonjuror, and Mr. Francis Higgins, the rector of Balruddery, in the county of Dublin. Complaint was made upon the subject to Dr. Teniaon, archbishop of Canterbury, who was not inclined to molest him. Nevertheless, in the representation of the lower house of convocation to the queen in 1711, it was asserted, that weekly sermons were preached in defence of the Unitarian principles, an assertion which Mr. Emlyn thought proper to deny in a paper containing some observations upon it. After a few years, his congregation was dissolved by the death of the principal persons who had attended upon his ministry, and he retired into silent obscurity, but not into idleness; for the greater part of his life was diligently spent in endeavouring to support, by various works, the principles he had embraced, and the cause for which he had suffered. The first performance published by him, after his release from prison, was “A Letter to the Rev. Dr. Willis, 'dean of Lincoln; being some friendly remarks on his sermon before the honourable house of commons, Nov. 5, 1705.” The intention of this letter was to shew that the punishment even of papists for religion was not warranted by the Jewish laws; and that Christians had been more cruel persecutors than Jews. In 1706 Mr. Emlyn published what his party considered as one of his most elaborate productions, “A Vindication of the worship of the Lord Jesus Christ, on Unitarian principles. In anMver to what is said, on that head, by Mr. Joseph Boyse, in his Vindication of” the Deity of Jesus Christ. To which is annexed, an answer to Dr. Walerland on the same head.“Two publications came from our author in 1707, the first of which was entitled” The supreme Deity of God the Father demonstrated. In answer to Dr. Sherlock’s arguments fur the supreme Divinity of Jesus Christ, or whatever can be urged against the supremacy of the first person of the Holy Trinity.“The other was” A brief Vindication of the Bishop of Gloucester’s (Dr. Fowler) Discourses concerning the descent of the man Christ Jesus from Heaven, from Dr. Sherlock the dean of St. Paul’s charge of heresy. With a confutation of his new notion in his late book of The Scripture proofs of our Saviour’s divinity.“In 1708 Mr. Emlyn printed three tracts, all of them directed against Mr. Leslie. The titles of them are as follow: 1. Remarks on Mr. Charles Leslie’s first Dialogue on the Socinian controversy. 2. A Vindication of the Remarks on Mr. Charles Leslie’s first Dialogue on the Socinian controversy. 3. An Examination of Mr. Leslie’s last Dialogue relating to the satisfaction of Jesus Christ. Together with some remarks on Dr. Stillingfleet’s True reasons of Christ’s Sufferings. In the year 1710 he published” The previous question to the several questions about valid and invalid Baptism, Lay-baptism, &c. considered viz. whether there be any necessity (upon the principles of Mr. Wall’s History of infant baptism) for the continual use of baptism among the posterity of baptised Christians.“But this hypothesis, though supported with ingenuity and learning, has not obtained many converts. Our author did not again appear from the press till 1715, when he published” A full Inquiry into the original authority of that text, 1 John v. 7. There are three that bear record in heaven, &c. containing an account of Dr. Mill’s evidence, from antiquity, for and against its being genuine; with an examination of his judgment thereupon.“This piece was addressed to Dr. William Wake, lord archbishop of Canterbury, president, to the bishops of the same province, his grace’s suffragans, and to the clergy of the lower house of convocation, then assembled. The disputed text found an advocate in Mr. Martin, pastor of the French church at the Hague, who published a critical dissertation on the subject, in opposition to Mr. Emlyn’s Inquiry. In 1718 our author again considered the question, in” An Answer to Mr. Martin’s critical dissertation on 1 John v. 7; shewing the insufficiency of his proofs, and the errors of his suppositions, by which he attempts to establish the authority of that text from supposed manuscripts." Mr. Martin having published an examination of this answer, Mr. Emlyn printed a reply to it in 1720, which produced a third tract upon the subject by Mr. Martin, and there the controversy ended; nor, we believe, was it revived in a separate form, until within these few years by Mr. archdeacon Travis and professor Person.

As to a general character of prince Eugene, it may easily be collected from what has already been said of him. He was always remarkable for his liberality; one instance of which he shewed, while he was here in England, to Mrs. Centlivre, the poetess; who, having addressed to him a trifling poem on his visiting England, received from him a gold snuff-box, valued at about 35 pistoles. He was also a man of great and unaffected modesty, so that he could scarcely bear, with any tolerable grace, the just acknowledgments that were paid him by all the world. Burnet, who was admitted several times to much discourse with him, says, that “he descended to an easy equality with those who conversed with him, and seemed to assume nothing to himself, while he reasoned with others.” He said jokingly one day, when the duke of Marlborough talking of his attachment to his queen, Regina pecunia, “Money is his queen.” This great general was a man of letters; he was intended for the church, and was known at the court of France by the name of the abbé de Savrie. Having made too free in a letter with some of old Louis the Fourteenth’s gallantries, he fled out of France, and served as a volunteer in the emperor’s service in Hungary against the Turks, where he soon distinguished himself by his talents for the military art. He was presented by the emperor with a regiment, and a few years afterwards made commander in chief of his armies. Louvois, the insolent war-minister of the insolent Louis XIV. had written to him to tell him, that he must never think of returning to his country: his reply was, “Eugene entrera un jour en France en dépit de Louvois & de Louis.” In all his military expeditions, he carried with him Thomas a Kempis “de Imitatione.” He seemed to be of the opinion of the great Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, “that a good Christian always made a good soldier.” Being constantly busy, he held the passion of love very cheap, as a mere amusement, that served only to enlarge the power of women, and to abridge that of men. He used to say, “Les amoureux sont dans la société ce que les fanatiques sont en religion.” His amusement was war, and in the Memoirs written by himself, and lately published, he speaks of some of its horrors with too little feeling. It is said that he was observed to be one day very pensive, and was asked by his favourite aid-de-camp on what he was meditating so deeply? “My good friend,” replied he, “I am thinking, that if Alexander the Great had been obliged to wait for the approbation of the deputies of Holland before he attacked the enemy, how impossible it would have been for him to have made half the conquests that he did!” This illustrious conqueror lived to a great age, and being tam Mercurio quam Marte, “as much a scholar as a captain,” amused himself with making a fine collection of books, pictures, and prints, which are now in the emperor’s collection at Vienna. The celebrated cardinal Passionei, then nuncio at Vienna, preached his funeral sermon, from the following text of apocryphal Scripture: “Alexander, son, of Philip the Macedonian, made many wars, took many strong holds, went through the ends of the earth, took spoils of many nations: the earth was quiet before him. After these things he fell sick, and perceived that he should die.”—Maccabees.

, one of the most eminenjt and laborious scholars of his time in Europe, was descended both by the father’s and mother’s side from a family originally of Holstein. His father, Werner Fabricius, a native of Itzhoa, in Holstein, was director of the music at St.Paul'p in Leipsic, organist of the church of St. Nicholas in that city, and a poet and a man of letters, as appears by a work be published in 1657, entitled “Delicias Harmonicas.” His mother was Martha Corthum, the daughter of John Corthum, a clergyman of Bergedorff, and the descendant of a series of protestant clergymen from the time of the reformation. He was born at Leipsic Nov. 11, 1668. His mother died in 1674, and his father in 1679; but the latter, while he lived, had begun to instruct him, and on hig death-bed recommended him to the care of Valentine Albert, an eminent divine and philosopher, who employed, as his first master, Wenceslau* Buhl, whom Mayer calls the common Msecenas of orphans; and he appears to have been taught by him for about five years. He also received instructions at the same time under Jo. Goth. Herrichius, rector of the Nicolaitan school at Leipsic, an able Greek and Latin scholar, whose services Fabricius amply acknowledges in the preface to Herrichius’s “Poemata Graeca et Latina,” which he published in 1718, out of regard to the memory of this tutor. In 1684, Valentine Albert sent him to Quedlinburgh to a very celebrated school, of which the learned Samuel Schmidt was at that time rector. It was here that he met with, in the library, a copy of Barthius’s “Adversaria,” and the first edition of Morhoff’s “Polyhistor,” which he himself informs us, gave the first direction to his mind as to that species of literary history and research which he afterwards carried beyond all his predecessors, and in which, if we regard the extent and accuracy of his labours, he has never had an equal. Schmidt had accidentally shown him Barthius^, and requested him to look into it; but it seemed to open to him such a wide field of instruction and pleasure, that he requested to take it to his room and study it at leisure, and from this he conceived the first thought, although, perhaps, at that timfe, indistinct, of his celebrated Bibliothecas. After his return, to Leipsic in 1686, he met with Morhoff, who, he says, gave his new-formed inclination an additional spur. He now was matriculated in the college of Leipsic, and was entirely under the care of his guardian Valentine Albert, one of the professors, with whom he lodged for seven years. During this time he attended the lectures of Carpzovius, Olearius, Feller, Rechenberg, Ittigius, Menckenius, &c. and other learned professors, and acknowledges hisobligations in particular to Ittigius, who introduced him to a knowledge of the Christian fathers, and of ecclesiastical history. It is perhaps unnecessary to add of one who has given such striking proofs of the fact, that his application to his various studies was incessant and successful. His reading was various and extensive, and, like most scholars of his class, he read with a pen in his hand.

Fenelon passed the last years of his life in his diocese, in a manner worthy of a good archbishop, a man of letters, and a Christian philosopher. The amiableness of his manners and character obtained for him a respect, which was paid even by the enemies of his country; for in the last war with Louis XIV. the duke of Marlborough expressly ordered the lands of Fenelon to be spared. He died in January 1715, at the age of sixty-three.

The duke of Orleai6 sending de Vendome again into Italy in 1706, Folard had orders to throw himself into Modena, to defend it against prince Eugene; where he acquitted himself with his usual skill, but was very near being assassinated. The description which he has given of the conduct and character of the governor of this town, may be found in his “Treatise of the Defence of Places,” and deserves to be read. He received a dangerous wound on the thigh at the battle of Blenheim, or Malplaquet, and was some time after made prisoner by prince Eugene. Being exchanged in 1711, he was made governor of Bourbourg. In 1714, he went to Malta, to assist in defending that island against the Turks. Upon his return to France, he embarked for Sweden, having a passionate desire to see Charles XII. He acquired the esteem and confidence of that celebrated monarch, who sent him to France to negociate the reestablishment of Jarnes II. upon the throne of England; but, that project being dropped, he returned to Sweden, followed Charles XII. in his expedition to Norway, and served under him at the siege of Frederickshall, where that prince was killed, Dec. 11, 1718. Folard then returned to France, and made his last campaign in 1719, under the duke of Berwick, in quality of colonel. From that time he applied himself intensely to the study of the art military, as far as it could be studied at home; and built his theories upon the foundation of his experience and observations. He contracted an intimacy with count Saxe, who, he then declared, would one day prove a very great general. He was chosen a fellow of the royal society at London, in 1749; and in 1751, made a journey to Avignon, where he died in 1752, aged eighty-three years. He was the author of several works, the principal of which are, 1. “Commentaries upon Polybius,” in 6 vols. 4to. 2. “A Book of new Discoveries in War.” 3. “A Treatise concerning the Defence of Places, &c.” in French. Those who would know more of this eminent soldier, may consult a French work entitled, “Memoires pour servir a THistoire de M. de Chevalier de Folard. Ratisbone, 1753,” 12mo. As a man of letters, he drew his knowledge from ancient authors, which as a military man he explains with great clearness. The form of his writings is not so pleasing as the matter. The abundance of his ideas led him into too great a profusion of words. His style is negligent, his reflections detached, and his digressions either useless, or too long; but he was undoubtedly a man of genius.

, a learned critical and poetical writer of Germany, was born at Baling, in Suabia, in 1547. His father being a minister and a man of letters, taught him the rudiments of learning, and then sent him to Tubingen, where he made so amazing a progress in the Greek and Latin tongues, that he is said to have written poetry in both when he was no more than thirteen years of age. He continued to improve himself in compositions of several kinds, as well prose as verse; and at twenty years old was made a professor in the university of Tubingen. Though his turn lay principally towards poetry, insomuch, that as Melchior Adam tells us, he really could make verses as, fast as he wanted them, yet he was acquainted with every part of science and learning. He used to moderate in philosophical disputes; and to read public lectures in mathematics and astronomy, before he had reached his twenty-fifth year. In 1579, his reputation being much extended, he had a mind to try his fortune abroad, and therefore prepared to go to the ancient university of Friburg, where he had promised to read lectures. But he was obliged to desist from this purpose, partly because his wife refused to accompany him, and partly because the duke of Wirtemberg would not consent to his going thither, or any where else.

His designs were, however, now interrupted by a visit to the continent, which, according to custom, his father thought necessary to complete the education of an English gentleman. Previous to his departure he obtained recommendatory letters from lady Hervey, Horace Walpole (the late lord Orford), Mallet, and the duke de Nivernois, to various persons of distinction in France. In acknowledging the duke’s services, he notes a circumstance which in some degree unfolds his own character, and exhibits that superiority of pretensions from which he never departed. “The duke received me civilly, but (perhaps through Maty’s fault) treated me more as a man of letters than as a man of fashion.” Congreve and Gray were weak enough to be offended on a similar account, but that Mr. Gibbon, whose sole ambition was to rise to literary fame, should have for a moment preferred the equivocal character of a man of fashion, is as unaccountable as it is wonderful that, at an advanced period of life, he should have recorded the incident.

In France, however, the fame of his essay had preceded him, and he was gratified by being considered as a man of letters, who wrote for his amusement. Here he mixed in familiar society with D'Alembert, Diderot, count de Caylus, the abbé de Bleterie, Barthelemy, Raynal, Arnaud, Helvetius, and others, who were confessedly at the head of French literature. After passing fourteen weeks in Paris, he revisited (in the month of May 1763) his old friends at Lausanne, where he remained nearly a year. Among the occurrences here which he records with most pleasure, is his forming an acquaintance with Mr. Holroyd, now lord Sheffield, who has since done so much honour to his memory, and whom he characterises as “a friend whose activity in the ardour of youth was always prompted by a benevolent heart, and directed by a strong understanding.” In 1764 he set out for Italy, after having studied the geography and ancient history of the seat of the Roman empire, with such attention as might render his visit profitable. Although he disclaims that enthusiasm which takes fire at every novelty, the sight of Rome appears to have conquered his apathy, and at once fixed the source of his fame. “It was at Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as he sat musing amidst the ruins of the capitol, while the bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter (now the church of the Zoccolants, or Franciscan friars) that the idea of writing the Decline and Fall of the city first started to his mind.” But this appears to hate been merely the effect of local emotion, for his plan was then confined to the decay of the city. In the month of June 1765, he arrived at his father’s house, and seems to have entered on a life which afforded no incident, or room for remark. The five years and a half which intervened between his travels and his father’s death in 1770, he informs us, were the portion of his life which he passed with the least enjoyment, and remembered with the least satisfaction. By the resignation of his father, and the death of sir Thomas Worsley, he was promoted to the rank of major and lieutenant-colonel commandant of his regiment of militia, but was, each year that it was necessary to attend the monthly meeting and exercise, more disgusted with “the inn, the wine, the company, and the tiresome repetition of annual attendance and daily exercise.”

, an Italian poet, of the same family with the preceding, was born at Ferrara in 1504. His father, being a man of letters, took great care of his education; and placed him under Cselio Calcagnini, to study the languages and philosophy. He made an uncommon progress, and then applied himself to the study of physic; in which faculty he was afterwards a doctor. At 21 years of age, he was employed to read public lectures at Ferrara upon physic and polite literature. In 1542, the duke of Ferrara made him his secretary; which office he held till the death of that prince in 1558. He was continued in it by his successor: but envy having done him some ill offices with his master, he was obliged to quit the court. He left the city at the same time, and removed with his family to Mondovi in Piedmont; where he taught the belles lettres publicly for three years. He then went to Turin but the air there not agreeing with his constitution, he accepted the professorship of rhetoric at Pavia which the senate of Milan, hearing of his being about to remove, and apprized of his great merit, freely offered him. This post he filled with great repute; and afterwards obtained a place in the academy of that town. It was here he got the name of Cintio, which he retained ever after, and put in the title-page of his books. The gout, which was hereditary in his family, beginning to attacR him severely, he returned to Ferrara; thinking that his native air might afford him relief. But he was hardly settled there, when he grew extremely ill; and, after languishing about three months, died in 1573.

, a Portuguese writer of the sixteenth century, was born at Alanquar near Lisbon, of a noble family, in 1501, and brought upas a domestic in, the court of king Emanuel, where he was considered both as a man of letters and of business. Having a strong passion for travelling, he contrived to get a public commission; and travelled through almost all the countries of Europe, contracting as he went an acquaintance with all the learned. At Dantzic he became intimate with the brothers John and Olaus Magnus; and he spent five months at Friburg with Erasmus. He afterwards went to Padua, in 1534, where he resided four years, studying under Lazarus Bonamicus; not, however, without making frequent excursions into different parts of Italy. Here he obtained the esteem of Peter, afterwards cardinal Bembus, of Christopher Maclrucius, cardinal of Trent, and of James Sadolet. On his return to Lou vain in 1538, he had recourse to Conrad Goclenius and Peter Nannius, whose instructions were of great use to him, and applied himself to music and poetry; in the former of which he made so happy a progress, that he was qualified to compose for the churches. He married at Louvain, and his design was to settle in this city, in order to enjoy a little repose after fourteen years travelling; but a war breaking out between Charles V. and Henry II. of France, Louvain was besieged in 1542, and Goez, who has written the history of this siege, put himself at the head of the soldiers, and contributed much to the defence of the town against the French, when the other officers had abandoned it. When he was old, John III. of Portugal, recalled him into his country, in order to write the history of it; but as it became first necessary to arrange the archives of the kingdom, which he found in the greatest confusion, he had little leisure to accomplish his work. The favours also which the king bestowed upon him created him so much envy, that his tranquillity was at an end, and he came to be accused; and, though he cleared himself from all imputations, was confined to the town of Lisbon. Here, it is said that he was one day found dead in his own house; and in such a manner as to make it doubted whether he was strangled by his enemies, or died of an apoplexy; but other accounts inform us, with more probability, that he fell into the fire in a fit, and was dead before the accident was discovered. This happened in 1560, and he was interred in the cburck of Notre Dame, at Alanquar. Rewrote “Fides, Religio, Moresque Æthiopum” “De Imperio et Rebus Lusitanorum” “Hispania;” “Urbis OlissiponensisDescriptio;” “Chronica do Rey Dom Emanuel” “Historia do Principe Dom Juao” and other works, which have been often printed, and are much esteemed. Antonio says, that, though he is an exact writer, yet he has not written the Portuguese language in its purity; which, however, is not to be wondered at, considering how much time he spent out of his own country.

, a Roman senator, and a man of letters, flourished in the reign of Caligula, and was greatly distinguished for eloquence, and for the study of philosophy, as well as for a moral conduct surpassing that of many of his contemporaries. He refused to obey the command of the emperor to appear as the accuser of Marcus Silanus, and suffered death in consequence, in the 40th year of the Christian sera. Seneca, who never speaks of him without admiration, says, that he was put to death because he was too good a man to be permitted to live under a tyrant. He is said to have written a treatise concerning agriculture and the management of vines. He was the father of the illustrious Cn. Julius Agricola.

The origin of the philosophical career of Helvetius is, by La Harpe, traced to a cause of a very singular nature, and not perhaps very credible. While yet young, and coveting every species of enjoyment within the reach of his age, his accomplishments, and his wealth, he beheld in a public garden a man who had none of these advantages, and to whom a circle of women were doing honour. This wasMaupertuis, just returned from his voyage towards the pole, and who had acquired a temporary reputation in the sciences. Helvetius was struck with the consideration which the reputation of a man of letters was able to ensure. He had hitherto succeeded easily in all that he had attempted. He had danced to admiration at the opera, under the mask of Juvilliers, one of the first dancers of the time. He had already made attempts in poetry; he had submitted his verses to Voltaire, and the lettered veteran had politely intimated that this was his proper line. He then directed his attention to philosophy, and connected himself with its chiefs, particularly with Diderot.

Diderot is supposed to have furnished some leading ideas to Helv<-t.ius for his work on the Mind. As his hypothesis, says l.a Harpe, every where terminates in materialism, it is probable that the basis of it was furnished to a man of the world, of course little conversant with these matters, by a man of letters by profession, an apostle of atheism, who loved nothing better than to make disciples.

With this apology, we return to his well-earned promotions. In 1762, he had the sine-cure rectory of Folkton, near Bridlington, Yorkshire, given him by the lord chancellor (earl of Northington), on the recommendation of Mr. Allen of Prior-Park and in 1765, on the recommendation of bishop Warburton and Mr. Charles Yorke, he was chosen preacher of Lincoln’s-inn; and was collated to the archdeaconry of Gloucester, on the death of Dr. Geekie, by bishop Warburton, in August 1767. On Commencement Sunday, July 5, 1768, he was admitted D. D. at Cambridge; and on the same day was appointed to open the lecture founded by his friend bishop Warburton, for the illustration of the prophecies, in which he exhibited a model worthy of the imitation of his successors. His “Twelve Discourses” on that occasion, which had been delivered before the most polite and crowded audiences that ever frequented the chapel, were published in 1772, under the title of “An Introduction to the Study of the Prophecies concerning the Christian Church, and in particular concerning the Church of Papal Rome;” and raised his character as a divine, learned and ingenious, to an eminence almost equal to that which he possessed as a man of letters; but his notion of a double sense in prophecy, which he in general supposes, has not passed without animadversion. This volume produced a private letter to the author from Gibbon the historian, under a fictitious name, respecting the book of Daniel, which Dr. Hurd answered; and the editor of Gibbon’s Miscellaneous Works having printed the answer, Dr. Hurd thought proper to include both in the edition of his works published since his death (in 1811). It was not, however, until the appearance of Gibbon’s “Miscellaneous Works,” that he discovered the real name of his correspondent.

When he had in some measure recovered from the shock of Mrs. Johnsons death, he contributed several papers to the “Adventurer,” which was carried on by Dr. Hawkesworth and Dr. Warton. The profit of these papers he is said to have given to Dr. Bathurst, a physician of little practice, but a very amiable man, whom he highly respected. Mr. Boswell thinks he endeavoured to make them pass for Bathurst’s, which is highly improbable . In 1754 we find him approaching to the completion of his “Dictionary.” Lord Chesterfield, to whom he once looked up as to a liberal patron, had treated him with neglect, of which, after Johnson declined to pay court to such a man, he became sensible, and, as an effort at reconciliation, wrote two papers in the “World,” recommending the Dictionary, and soothing the author by some ingenious compliments. Had there been no previous offence, it is probable this end would have answered, and Johnson would have dedicated the work to him. He loved praise, and from lord Chesterfield, the Maecenas of the age, and the most elegant of noble writers, praise was at this time valuable. But Johnson never departed from exacting the just respect due to a man of letters, and was not to be appeased by the artifice of these protracted compliments. He could not even brook that his lordship should for a moment suppose him reconciled by his flattery, but immediately wrote that celebrated letter which has been so much admired as a model of dignified contempt. The allusion to the loss of his wife, and to his present situation, is exquisitely beautiful. “The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it till I Am Solitary, and cannot impart it till I am known, and do not want it.” Lord Chesterfield is said to have concealed his feelings on this occasion with his usual art, conscious, perhaps, that they were not to be envied.

Kuster’s chief excellence was his skill in the Greek language, to which he devoted himself with an enthusiasm which undervalued every other pursuit. He thought the history and chronology of Greek words the most solid entertainment of a man of letters, and despised all other branches of learning. It is reported of him, that one day taking up Bayle’s “Commentaire Philosophique,” in a bookseller’s shop, he threw it down, and said, “This is nothing but a book of reasoning; non sic itur ad astra.” But many of his characteristic peculiarities will be best understood from the following letter from Joseph Wasse, the learned editor of Sallust.

, historiographer of buildings of the academy della Crusca, and of that of the Arcades at Rome, was born at Dijon, in 1707, of poor parents, but he went early to Paris, where his talents procured him friends and patrons. He then came to London, and met with the same advantage. In 1746 Maupertuis offered him, on the part of the king of Prussia, a place suitable to a man of letters, at the court of Berlin; but he preferred mediocrity at home to flattering hopes held out to him from abroad. He died in 1781. His tragedy of “Abensaïde,” the subject of which is very interesting, was well received at first, notwithstanding the harshness of the versification but it did not support this success when revived on the stage in 1743. What most brought the abbé Le Blanc into repute was the collection of his letters on the English, 1758, 3 vols. 12mo, in which are many judicious reflections; but he is heavy, formal, fruitful in vulgar notions, and trivial in his erudition, and the praises he bestows on the great men, or the literati, to whom he addresses his letters, are deficient in ease and delicacy. The letters of abbé Le Blanc cannot bear a comparison with the “London” of Grosley, who is a far more agreeable writer, if not a more accurate observer.

, an English writer, was related to Sampson Lennard, who married Margaret baroness Dacre, and of whom honourable mention is made in Camden’s Britannia. In early life he followed the profession of arms, and was attached to sir Philip Sidney, with whom he fought at the battle of Zutphen. He was afterwards distinguished as a man of letters, and published various translations from the Latin and French, particularly Perrin’s “History of the Waldenses;” Du Plessis Mornay’s History of Papacie;“and Charron” On Wisdom.“He was of some note as a topographer, and of considerable eminence as a herald, having been, in the latter part of his life, a member of the college of arms. Some of his heraldical compilations, which are justly esteemed, (see” Catalogue of the Harleian Mss.") are among the manuscripts in the British Museum. He died in August 1633, and was buried at St. Bennet’s, Paul’s Wharf. Mr. Granger received this brief memoir of Lennard, from Thomas the late lord Dacre.

, a celebrated French political and miscellaneous writer, and brother to the abbé Condillac, was born at Grenoble in March 1709, and was educated in the Jesuits’ college at Lyons. In his youth he attached himself to his relation the cardinal de Tencin, but never took any higher order in the church than that of sub-deacon. On his coming into life, as it is called, he had the honour to be admitted, both as a relation and a man of letters, into the parties of madame de Tencin, so well known for her intrigues and her sprightly talents, who at that time gave dinners not only to wits, but to politicians. Here madame de Tencin was so much pleased with the figure Mably made in conversation with Montesquieu and other philosophical politicians at hertable, that she thought he might prove useful to her brother, then entering on his ministerial career. The first service he rendered to the cardinal was to draw out an abridgment of all the treaties from the peace of Westphalia to that time (about 1740): the second service he rendered his patron, was of a more singular kind. The cardinal soon becoming sensible that he had not the talent xof conveying his ideas in council, Mably suggested to him the lucky expedient of an application to the king, that he might be permitted to express his thoughts in writing, and there can be little doubt that m this also he profited by the assistance of his relative, who soon began himself to meddle in matters of state. In 1743 he was entrusted to negoeiate privately at Paris with the Prussian ambassador, and drew up a treaty, which Voltaire was appointed to carry to Berlin. Frederick, to whom* this was no secret, conceived from this time a very high opinion of the abbe, and, as Mably’s biographer remarks, it was somewhat singular that tvro men of letters, who had no political character, should be employed on a negociation which made such an important change in the state of affairs in Europe. The abbe" also drew up the papers which were to serve as the basis of the negociation carried on in the congress at Breda in the month of April 1746.

The character of Aldus as a printer is so well known to every scholar, and to such only it can be interesting, that it is unnecessary to enlarge upon it here. But he may be considered also as an original benefactor to the literature of the age. He published a Latin grammar of his own composition; and in 1515, after his death, was published by his friend Marcus Musurus, a Greek grammar, which Aldus had compiled with great research and industry. He wrote likewise a treatise “de metris Horatianis,” which is reprinted in Dr. Combe’s edition of that poet. He produced a Greek dictionary, printed by himself, in folio, 1497, and reprinted by Francis D' Asola in 1524. He was likewise the author of many of the Latin translations of the classics, wrote many letters, some of which have been published, and for some years after he settled at Venice, gave a course of lectures on the best Greek and Roman authors, which was attended by a great number of students. Aldus, however, has not escaped the censures of criticism. Urceus Codrus, the learned professor of Bologna, complained, that he suffered many errors to escape uncorrected, in his editions of the Greek authors; that he sold his copies too dear; and printed them with an useless and unsuitable width of margin. Later critics have not been sparing of remarks somewhat similar. Krnesti, in his notes on the Letters of Pliny, blames Aldus for excessive boldness of conjectural criticism. In the preface to his Tacitus, the same critic remarks, that Aldus rarely made on the second and subsequent editions of the works he printed, any alterations but such as consisted in neglected errors of the press. It is indeed true, that the editions of Greek works printed by Aldus, are not always so correct as his Latin and Italian editions. But their defects are owing to the disadvantages of Aldus’s situation, much rather than to negligence, or inability in himself, as a printer and a man of letters. He had not always a sufficient number of manuscripts to collate: and sometimes he could not have the benefit of the judgment of a sufficient number of the learned upon the difficulties which occurred to him. After beginning to print any particular work, he often had not leisure to pause for a sufficient length of time, over the difficulties occurring in the progress of the edition. He might, in some instances, also, print a manuscript which he did not approve, lest it should otherwise have been lost to posterity.

By Voltaire’s advice, he repaired to Paris in 1745 to try his fortune as a man of letters. His first attempts were of the dramatic kind, which had various success, but never enough to render him independent of other employment. His first tragedy, “Denys le Tiran,” indeed, succeeded so well, as to give him a name, and introduce him into the higher circles, but this led him at the same time into a course of dissipation of which he afterwards repented, and which he relinquished, upon being promoted to the place of secretary to the royal buildings, by the interest of madame Pompadour.

, a late eminent anatomist and physician, was born in Fifeshire, in 1742, at Park-hill, a large farm on the side of the Tay, near Newburgh, held by his father, Mr. John Marshal, of the earl of Rothes. His lather had received a classical education himself; and being desirous that his son should enjoy a similar advantage, sent him first to the grammar-school at Newburgh, and afterwards tothat of Abernethy, then the most celebrated place of education among the Seceders, of which religious sect he was a most zealous member. Here he was regarded as a quick and apt scholar. From his childhood he had taken great delight in rural scenery. One day, while under the influence of feelings of this kind, being then about fourteen years old, he told his father that he wished to leave school, and be a farmer, but he soon shewed that it had not arisen from any fondness for ordinary country labours. In the following harvest-time, for instance, having been appointed to follow the reapers, and bind up the cut corn into sheaves, he would frequently lay himself down in some shady part of the field, and taking a book from his pocket, begin to read, -utterly forgetful of his task. About two years after, however, he resumed his studies, with the intention of becoming a minister: and soon after, he was admitted a student of philosophy at Abernethy; and next became a student of divinity. In his nineteenth year he went to Glasgow, and divided his ­time between teaching a school, and attending lectures in the university. The branches of learning which he chiefly cultivated were Greek and morals. At the end of two years passed in this way, he became (through the interest of the celebrated Dr. Reid, to whom his talents and diligence had recommended him), tutor in a gentleman’s family, of the name of Campbell, in the Island of Islay. He remained here four years, and removed to the university of Edinburgh, with Mr. -Campbell’s son, whom the following year he carried back to his father. Having surrendered his charge, he returned to Edinburgh, where he subsisted himself by reading Greek and Latin privately with students of the university; in the mean time taking no recreation, but giving up all his leisure to the acquisition of knowledge. He still considered himself a student of divinity, in which capacity he delivered two discourses in the divinity-hall; and from motives of curiosity began in 1769 to attend lectures on medicine. While thus employed, he was chosen1 member of the Speculative society, where, in the beginning of 1772, he became acquainted with lord Balgonie, who was so much pleased with the display which he made of genius and learning in that society, that he requested they“should read together; and in the autumn of the following year made a proposal for their going to the Continent, which was readily accepted. They travelled slowly through Flanders to Paris, where they stayed a month, and then proceeded to Tours, where they resided eight months, in the house of a man of letters, under whose tuition they strove to acquire a correct knowledge of the French language and government. They became acquainted here with several persons of rank, among whom were a prince of Rohan, and the dukes of Clioiseul and Aguilon, at whose seats in the neighbourhood they were sometimes received as gnests. An acquaintance with such people would make Marshal feel pain on account of his want of external accomplishments; and this, probably, was the reason of his labouring” to learn to dance and to fence while he was at Tours, though he was then more than thirty years old. He returned to England in the summer of 1774; and proceeded soon after to Edinburgh, where he resumed the employment of reading Latin and Greek with young men. Hitherto he seems to have formed no settled plan of life, but to have bounded his views almost entirely to the acquisition of knowledge, and a present subsistence. His friends, however, had been induced to hope that he would at some time be advanced to a professor’s cl; ir and it is possible that he entertained the same hope himself. In the spring of 1775, this hope appeared to be strengthened by his being requested by Mr. Stewart, the professor of humanity at Edinburgh, to officiate for him, as he was then unwell: Marshal complied, but soon after appears to have given up all hopes of a professorship, and studied medicine with a determination to practise it. In the spring of 1777, he was enabled by the assistance of a friend, Mr. John Campbell of Edinburgh, to come to London for professional improvement; and studied anatomy under Dr. W. Hunter, and surgery under Mr. J, Hunter. After he had been here a twelvemonth, he was appointed surgeon to the S3rd, or Glasgow regiment, through the interest of the earl of Leverv, the father of his late pupil, lord Balgonie. The first year after was passed with his regiment, in Scotland. In the following he accompanied it to Jersey, where he remained with it almost constantly till the conclusion of the war in the beginning of 1783, when it was disbanded. In this situation he enjoyed, almost for the first time, the pleasures best suited to a man of independent mind. His income was more than sufficient for his support; his industry and knowledge rendered him useful; and his character for integrity and honour procured him general esteem. From Jersey he came to London, seeking for a settlement, and was advised by Dr. D. Pitcairn (with whom he had formed a friendship while a student at Glasgow) to practise surgery here, though he had taken the degree of doctor of physic the preceding year at Edinburgh; and to teach anatomy at St. Bartholomew’s hospital, it being at the same time proposed, that the physicians to that hospital (of whom Dr. Pitcairn was one) should lecture on other branches of medical learning. He took a house, in consequence, in the neighbourhood of the hospital; and proceeded to prepare for the execution of his part of the scheme. This proving abortive, he began to teach anatomy, the following year, at his own house; and at length succeeded in procuring annually a considerable number of pupils, attracted to him solely by the reputation of his being a most diligent and able teacher. In 1788 he quitted the practice of surgery, and commenced that of medicine, having previously become a member of the London college oF physicians. In the ensuing year a dispute arose between John Hunter and him, which it is proper to relate, as it had influence on his after-life. When Marshal returned to London, he renewed his acquaintance with Mr. Hunter, who thought so well of him, that he requested his attendance at a committee of his friends, to whose correction he submitted his work on the venereal disease, before it was published. He became also a member of a small society, instituted by Dr. Fordyce and Mr. Hunter, for the improvement of medical and surgical knowledge. Having mentioned at a meeting of this society, that, in the dissection of those who had died insane, he had always found marks of disease in the head, Mr. Hunter denied the truth of this in very coarse language. The other members interfering, Mr. Hunter agreed to say, that his expressions did not refer to Dr. Marshal’s veracity, but to the accuracy of his observation. Marshal, not being satisfied with this declaration, at the next meeting of the society demanded a.i ample apology; but Mr. Hunter, instead of making one, repeated the offensive expressions; on which Marshal poured some water over his head out of a bottle which had stood near them. A scuffle ensued, which was immediately stopped by the other members, and no father personal contention between them ever occurred. But Marshal, conceiving that their common friends in the society had, from the superior rank of Mr. Hunter, favoured him more in this matter than justice permitted, soon after estranged himself from them. He continued the teaching of anatomy till 1800, in which year, during a tedious illness, the favourable termination of which appeared doubtful to him, he resolved, rather suddenly, to give it up. While he taught anatomy, almost the whole of the fore-part of the day, during eight months in the year, was spent by him in his dissecting and lecture rooms. He had, therefore, but little time for seeing sick persons, except at hours frequently inconvenient to them; and was by this means prevented from enjoying much medical practice; but as soon as he had recovered his health, after ceasing to lecture, his practice began to increase. The following year it was so far increased as to render it proper that he should keep a carriage. From this time to within a few months of his death, an interval of twelve years, his life flowed on in nearly an equable stream. He had business enough in the way he conducted it to give him employment during the greater part of the day; and his professional profits were sufficient to enable him to live in the manner he chose, and provide for the wants of sickness and old age. After having appeared somewhat feeble for two or three years, he made known, for the first time, in the beginning of last November, that he laboured under a disease of his bladder, though he must then have been several years affected with it. His ailment was incurable, and scarcely admitted of palliation. For several months he was almost constantly in great pain, which he bore manfully. At length, exhausted by his sufferings, he died on the 2nd of April, 1813, at his house in Bartlett’s buildings, Holborn, being then in the seventy-first year of his age. Agreeably to his own desire, his body was interred in the church-yard of the parish of St. Pancras. His fortune, amounting to about bOOO/. was, for the most part, bequeathed to sisters and nephews.

The first edition of the “Lusiad,” consisting of a thousand copies, had so rapid a sale, that a second edition, with improvements, was published in June 177S. About the same time, as he had yet no regular provision, some means were employed, but ineffectually, to procure him a pension from the crown, as a man of letters. Dr. Lowth, then bishop of London, had more than once intimated, that he was ready to admit him into holy orders, and provide for him; but Mickle refused the offer, lest his hitherto uniform support of revealed religion should be imputed to interested motives. This offer was highly honourable to him, as it must have proceeded from a knowledge of the excellence of his character, and the probable advantages which the church must have derived from the accession of such a member. Nor was his rejection of it less honourable, for he was still poor. Although he had received nearly a thousand pounds from the sale and for the copyright of the “Lusiad,” he appropriated all of that sum which he could spare from his immediate necessities to the payment of his debts, and the maintenance of his sisters, He now issued proposals for printing an edition of his original poems, by subscription, in quarto, at one guinea each copy. For this he had the encouragement of many friends, and probably the result, would have been very advantageous, but the steady friendship of the late commodore Johnstone relieved him from any farther anxiety on this account.

, a man of letters, and secretary to the lieutenant-general of the police in Paris, was a native of La Flche, and died September 9, 1762. He published u A Translation of Cicero’s Treatise on Laws,“and of the dialogue on orators generally attibuted to Tacitus;” Histoire de l'Exil de Ciceron,“which is said to have been translated into English;” Histoire de Ciceron,“1745, 2 vols, quarto. This work appeared nearly at the same time with that of our own countryman Dr. Middleton on the same subject, and it is no small praise that it shared with it in reputation” Nomenclator Ciceronianus,“and” A Translation of Boetius de Consolatione." Morabin’s works shew him to have been a man of learning but his style is not good, and in his translations he fails of transfusing the spirit of the original.

Having thus failed in obtaining the first situation in which a man of letters could be placed, he succeeded, in 1647, in being appointed to what might be considered as the second, that of preceptor to Philip, then duke of Anjou, and afterwards duke of Orleans, the king’s brother. He had also conferred on him the titles of historiographer of France and counsellor of state. By his first wife he had an only son, who died in 1664, in the thirty-fifth year of his age. His wife also being dead long before, he is said to have been so much afflicted at the loss of his son, as to determine to marry again, which he did the same year, 1664, at the age of seventy-six He died in 1672, aged eightyfour. He was a voluminous writer, and upon all subjects, ancient, modern, sacred and profane. We cannot, perhaps, to some of our readers, give a better idea of his works, than by comparing them to those of Bayle. We find in them the same scepticism and the same indecencies; and on this account Bayle expatiates on his character with congenial pleasure. In his private character, he was somewhat of a humourist, but his moral conduct was more correct than might have been expected from his writings. He is mentioned hy Guy Patin as a Stoic, who would neither praise nor be praised, and who followed his own fancies and caprices without any regard to the opinions of the world, and his dress and usual demeanour distinguished him from other men. In the court he lived like a philosopher, immersed in books, simple and regular in his manner of living, and void of ambition and avarice. His treatise which we have mentioned, “On the Virtue of Pagans/' was answered by Arnauld. La Mothers bookseller complaining that his book did not sell,” I know a secret,“said the author,” to quicken the sale:" he procured an order from government for its suppression, which was the means of selling the whole edition. His works were collected in two volumes folio; and there was an edition, we believe the last, printed at Dresden, in 1756, in 14 vols. 8vo, so lowpriced, in the French catalogues, that there seems now little value placed on them.

, a celebrated French antiquary ia the seventeenth century, was descended of a good family at Dijon, where his brother was proctor-general of the chamber of accounts, and born in 1623. Being inclined to the church, he became an ecclesiastic, and was made a canon in the holy chapel at Dijon but devoted himself wholly to the study and knowledge of antique monuments. Having laid a proper foundation of learning at home, he resigned his canonry, and went to Rome, where he resided many years; and, after his return to France, he held a correspondence with almost all the learned men in Europe. Perhaps there never was a man of letters, who had so frequent and extensive a commerce with the learned men of his time as the abbe Nicaise, nor with men of high rank. The cardinals Barbarigo and Noris, and pope Clement XL were among his regular correspondents. This learned intercourse took up a great part of his time, and hindered him from enriching the public with any large works; but the letters which he wrote himself, and those which he received from others, would make a valuable “Commercium Epistolicum.” The few pieces which he published are, a Latin dissertation “De Nummo Pantheo,” dedicated to Mr. Spanheim, and printed at Lyons in 1689. The same year he published an explication of an antique monument found at Guienne, in the diocese of Aach; but the piece which made the greatest noise was “Les Sirenes, ou discours sur leur forme et figure,” Paris, 1691, 4to; “A discourse upon the form and figure of the Syrens,” in which, following the opinion of Huet, bishop of Auvranches, he Undertook to prove, that they were, in reality, birds, and not fishes, or sea-monsters. He translated into French, from the Italian, a piece of Bellori, containing a description of the pictures in the Vatican, to which he added, “A Dissertation upon the Schools of Athens and Parnassus,” two of Raphael’s pictures. He wrote also a few letters in the literary journals, and a small tract upon the Ancient music; and died while he was labouring to present the public with the explanation of that antique inscription which begins “Mercurio et Minervæ Arneliæ, &c.” which was found in the village of Villy, where he died in Oct. 1701, aged 78.

, an elegant French writer, and classical editor, was the son of a counsellor of the parliament of Besangon y and born at Salins, March 30, 1682. After having finished his early studies with much applause, he entered thse society of the Jesuits, but left them, to their great regret, at the age of thirty-three. Before this they had conceived so high an opinion of hid merit, as to recommend him to be tutor to the prince of Asturias, but the abbe preferred a life of independence and tranquillity. Some time after, he came to Paris, and profited by the conversation of the few eminent survivors of the age of Louis XIV. On his arrival here he found the men of literature engaged in the famous dispute relative to the comparative merits of the ancients and moderns, but had the good sense to disapprove of the sentiments and paradoxes of Perrauk, and Terrasson, La Mothe, and Fontenelle. His first object appears to have been the study of his own language, which he wrote in great purity. In 1723 he was elected a member of the French academj-, and from this time devoted himself to the life of a man of letters.

, the chief of a family of engravers, and likewise a man of letters, was a native of Utrecht, but we have no account of his education, or dates either of birth or death. It appears that he applied himself very early in life to the study of the arts, and particularly delighted in drawing and designing from the works of the most eminent artists his contemporaries. He was sent by prince Maurice to teach drawing in an academy at Paris. At what time he came to England is not very clear none of his works done here are dated, says Vertue, later than 1635. From the paucity of English heads engraved by Crispin, and other circumstances, lord Orford seems inclined to doubt whether he ever was in England, and thinks it not improbable that drawings were sent to him from this country, as we know was the case afterwards with Houbraken, when he was employed on the “Illustrious Heads.”

, a man of letters in France, who was for some time professor of eloquence in the royal college of la Fleche, was born in 1741, at Villa Franca in Rouergue. He was a disinterested scholar, a plain, modest, and vjrtuous man. His eulogium on the great Colbert received the public approbation of the French academy in 1773. His principal fame has arisen from a poem (as he calls it) in prose, named “Telephus,” in twelve books. It was published in octavo in 1784, and is said to have been translated into English. The piece is well written, and contains, among other things, a beautiful picture of true friendship, of which he himself afforded a noble example. Pechmeja, and M. du Breuil, an eminent physician of the time, were the Pylades and Orestes of their age. The former had a severe illness in 1776, when his friend flew to his assistance, and from that time they were inseparable, and had every thing in common. A person once inquired of Pechmeja what income he possessed, “I have,” said he, “200 livres a-year.” Some wonder being expressed how he could subsist on so little, “Oh,” said he, “the doctor has plenty more.” The doctor died first of a contagious disorder, through which his friend attended him, and died only twenty days after, a victim to the strength of his friendship. He died about the end of April 1785, at the age of only forty-four.

, famous for his collection of medals, and his publications respecting them, was for a long time commissary-general, and chief-clerk of the French marine. He united the knowledge of a man of letters with all the activity of a man of business; but having, after forty years of service, obtained leave to retire, he thenceforth gave himself up entirely to the study of antiquities, and wrote upon the subject after he was blind with age, by means of an invention described in the last volume of his works. His cabinet of medals, which was purchased by the king in 1776, was the richest ever formed by a private individual; and learned men of all countries highly respected the collector of so valuable a treasure. He died in August 1782, at the surprising age of ninety -nine. He enriched the science of medals by a valuable set of works on that subject, forming altogether, with the supplements, ten volumes in quarto, with many plates; these were published at different times from 1762 to 1773, and contain judicious and learned explanations of the plates, which are executed with great exactness and beauty. It is to Pellerin that we are indebted for the first plates of medals perfectly representing the originals in every flaw and irregularity of edge and impression, which is a most capital improvement, and makes the view of such plates almost equal to the coins themselves.

, another very learned Frenchman, was born at Paris in 1617, and brought up to the profession of physic, in which faculty he took a doctor’s degree at Montpeliier: but, afterwards returning to Paris, neglected the practice of it, and gave himself up entirely to the study of polite literature. He lived some time with the first president Lamoignon, as preceptor to his sons; and afterwards with mons. Nicolai, first president of the chamber of accounts, as a man of letters and companion. He spent the greatest part of his life in composing; and had a wonderful facility with his pen, which enabled him to write much. He was deeply read in the ancient Greek and Latin authors, and joined to his skill in these, an uncommon knowledge in philosophical matters. He died in 1687, aged seventy.

, an Italian poet and a man of letters, was born of a noble family at Verona in 1731. He became an early proficient in classical literature, particularly the Greek, of which he was enthusiastically fond, and attained an excellent style. At this period the marquis Maffei and other eminent literary characters were resident at Verpna, in whose society the talents of Pompei received the most advantageous cultivation. He was first known as an author by “Canzoni Pastorali,” in two vols. 8vo. Able critics spoke in the highest terms of these pieces, on account of their sweetness and elegance it was thought by some good judges that they were never surpassed by any productions of the kind. He next translated some of the Idylls of Theocritus and Moschus, in which he exhibited a very happy selection of Italian words, corresponding with the Greek. The next object of his attention was dramatic poetry, in the higher departments of which the Italians were at that time very deficient, and he published in 1763 and 1770, his tragedies of “Hypermestra” and “Callirhoe,” which were represented with great success in several cities of the Venetian state. He now employed several years on a translation of “Plutarch’s Lives,” which appeared in 1774 in four vols. 4to. This work gave him considerable reputation as a prose writer and scholar, and it ranks among the very best classical versions in the Italian language. In 1778 he published two volumes of “Nuove Canzoni Pastorali” he also published poetical versions of the “Hero and Leander of Musjeus” of the “Hymns of Callimachus;” “A hundred Greek Epigrams” and the “Epistles of Ovid.” He was a member of some of the academies, and he served his native city in the capacities of secretary to the tribunal of public safety, and to the academy of painting. He died at Verona in 1790, at the age of fifty-nine, and his memory was honoured by various public testimonies, and by the erection of his bust in one of the squares of the city. He was highly respected and esteemed, as well for his morals as for his literary talents, and his fame was not limited to the confines of Italy. An edition of his works was published after his death in six vols. 8vo.

Leaving Port Royal, he went to Paris, and studied logic some time in the college of Harcourt. He had already composed some little pieces of French poetry, but it was in 1660, when all the poets were celebrating the marriage of the king, that he first discovered himself to the public. His “La Nymphe de la Seine,” written upon that occasion, was highly approved by Chapelain and so powerfully recommended by him to Colbert, that the minister sent Racine a hundred pistoles from the king, and settled a pension on him, as a man of letters, of 600 livres, which was paid him to the day of his death. The narrowness of his circumstances had obliged him to retire to Usez, where an uncle, who was canon regular and vicar general there, offered to resign to him a priory of his order which he then possessed, if he would become a regular; and he still wore the ecclesiastical habit, when he wrote the tragedy of “Theagenes,” which he presented to Moliere and that of the “Freres Ennemis,” in 1664, the subject of which was given him by Moliere.

, a man of letters, was originally of Hexham in Northumberland; and was entered of St. John’s college, Cambridge, in 1774. Dr. Ferris, the present dean of Battle, and Dr. Pearce, now dean of Ely, were his tutors at the university. Under the superintendance of those two excellent scholars, he acquired sound learning and a correct taste. He possessed, indeed, an excellent understanding, and a sort of intuitive knowledge of mankind. He distinguished himself at college by the elegance, beauty, and vigour, of his prose and poetical compositions; a love of the Muses very early in life took possession of his mind, and often interfered with the laborious duties of his studies. He entered himself a student of the Middle Temple in 1779, and was called to the bar in 1784. But literary pursuits and political connections took up too much of his time to admit of his pursuing, with sufficient diligence, the study of the law; otherwise, it is highly probable that he would have become a distinguished ornament of the bar. The chief works in which he was publicly known to have taken a part were in those celebrated political satires, “The Rolliad,” and the “Probationary Odes,” in the composition of which his talents were conspicuous. He wrote also the comedy of “The Fugi* live,” which was honoured by a considerable share of applause, both on the stage and in the closet. In private life so happily was the suavity of his temper blended with the vigour of his understanding, that he was esteemed by his adversaries in political principles, as well as by a very large circle of private friends. He was brought into parliament by the duke of Northumberland, in whose friendship he held a distinguished place, and by whose loan of 2000l. (which the duke has given up to his family) he was enabled to become proprietor of a fourth part of Drury-Iane theatre. He was suddenly taken ill on June 8, 1803, and died next day, leaving a widow and four daughters, to lament the loss of their affectionate protector. He was interred in Egham churchyard.

In 1730 he published “The Usefulness and Necessity of Revelation; in four Sermons preached at St. Olave’s Southwark,” 8vo; and, in 1733, “Relative Holiness, a Sermon preached at the consecration of the parish church of St. John’s Southwark.” He next undertook, at the request of the bishops Gibson and Potter, to publish a new edition of “Godwin de Prassulibus.” On this he returned to Cambridge in 1734, for the convenience of the libraries and more easy communication with his learned contemporaries; and in 1735 proceeded D. D. After the death of Dr. Savage, he was chosen unanimously, and without his knowledge, master of Emanuel college, Aug. 10, 1736; a rare and almost unprecedented compliment to a man of letters, for he had never been fellow of the college. He served the office of vice-chancellor in 1738, and again in 1769. In 1746 he was appointed one of his majesty’s chaplains, which he resigned in 1768. In 1743 he published at Cambridge his new edition of Godwin, in a splendid folio volume, with a continuation of the lives of the bishops to the time of publication; a work of unquestionable utility and accuracy. He was named in the will of archbishop Potter for an option, on condition that he cancelled a leaf of this work, relating to archbishop Tenison’s lukewarmness in the matter of the Prussian liturgy and bishops. Accordingly a new leaf was printed and sent to all the subscribers; “but,” in Mr. Cole’s opinion, “rather confirming the fact than disproving it.” Both the original and the substitute may be seen in the supplement to the old edition of the “Biographia Britannica,” art. Grabe, note, p. 78. The option, however, was not so easily obtained. It was the precentorship of Lincoln, and was contested by archbishop Potter’s chaplain, Dr. Chapman. The lord- keeper Henley gave it in favour of Chapman, but Dr. Richardson appealing to the House of Lords, the decree was unanimously reversed, and Dr. Richardson admitted into the precentorship in 1760. This affair appears to have been considered of importance. Warburton writes on it to his correspondent Hurd in approving terms. “I would not omit to give you the early news (in two words) that Dr. Richardson is come off victorious in the appeal. The precentorship of Lincoln is decreed for him; the keeper’s decree reversed with costs of suit. Lord Mansfield spoke admirably. It has been three days in trying.” Burn has inserted a full account of this cause in his “Ecclesiastical Law.”

, in Latin Sarravius, a learned French lawyer, was born towards the close of the sixteenth century, of a noble family, and educated by his father, who was a man of letters, with the greatest care. To the study of the law, he joined a taste for polite literature, philosophy, and criticism, wrote elegantly in Latin, and was an excellent Greek scholar. He had perused the classics with great attention; and some Latin and French verses which he wrote, show that he had formed his taste on the best models. He practised at the bar at Rouen, but was an enemy to litigious suits, and always endeavoured to prevent his clients from corning into court, while reconciliation was possible. He lived in intimacy and correspondence with the most learned men of his time, particularly Salmasius, Grotius, and our archbishop Usher. It is not much praise to add after this, that he had Christina queen of Sweden for a correspondent. He was of the protestant religion, and appears to have been displeased with some symptoms of what he thought lukewarm ness in his friend Grotius, and wished him to be more decided. Sarrau died May 30, 1651, advanced in years, and was lamented in poems and eloges by many learned contemporaries. He published the collection of Grotius’s correspondence entitled “Grotii epistolsc ad Gallos,” and his own Latin letters were published in 1654, 8vo, and reprinted at Utrecht with the letters of Marquard Gudius, in 1697, 4to, and again at Leyden by Peter Burman in 1711, who has inserted some of them in his valuable “Sylloge.” They contain many particulars of the literary history of the times. He appears to have been an exceeding admirer of Salmasius.

After the publication of this work, Dr. Smith remained four years at Glasgow, discharging his official duties with increasing reputation. Towards the end of 1763 he received an invitation from Mr. Charles Townsend to accompany the duke of Buccieugh on his travels; and the liberal terms of the proposal, added to a strong desire of visiting the continent of Europe, induced him to resign his professorship at Glasgow. Early in the year 1764 he joined the duke of Buccieugh in London, and in March set out with him for the continent. Sir James Macdonald, afterwards so justly lamented by Dr. Smith and many other distinguished persons, as a young man of the highest accomplishments and virtues, met them at Dover. After a fevr days passed at Paris, they settled for eighteen months at Thou louse, and then took a tour through the south of France to Geneva, where they passed two months. About Christmas 1765 they returned to Paris, and there remained till the October following. By the recommendations of David Hume, with whom Dr. Smith had been united in. strict friendship from the year 1752, they were introduced to the society of the first wits in France, but who were also unhappily the most notorious deists. The biographer of Dr. A. Smith has told us, in the words of the duke of Buccleugh himself, that he and his noble pupil lived together in the most uninterrupted harmony during the thres years of their travels; and that their friendship continued to the end of Dr. Smith’s life, whose loss was then sincerely regretted by the survivor. The next ten years of Dr. A. Smith’s life were passed in a retirement which formed a striking contrast to his late migrations. With the exception of a few visits to Edinburgh and London, he passed the whole of this period with his mother at Kirkaldy, occupied habitually in intense study. His friend Hume, who considered a town as the true scene for a man of letters, in vain attempted to seduce him from his retirement; till at length, in the beginning of 1776, he accounted for his long retreat by the publication of his “Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations,” 2 vols. 4to. This book is well known as the most profound and perspicuous dissertation of its kind that the world has ever seen. About two years after the publication of this work the author was appointed one of the commissioners of the customs in Scotland. The greater part of these two years he passed in London, in a society too extensive and varied to allow him much time for study. In consequence of his new appointment, he returned in 1778 to Edinburgh, where he enjoyed the last twelve years of his life in affluence, and among the companions of his youth. “During the first years of his residence in Edinburgh,” says his biographer, “his studies seemed to be entirely suspended; and his passion for letters served only to amuse his leisure and to animate his conversation. The infirmities of age, of which he very early began to feel the approaches, reminded him at last, when it was too late, of what he yet owed to the public and to his own fame. The principal materials of the works which he had announced had long ago been collected, and little probably was wanting, but a few years of health and retirement, to bestow on them that systematical arrangement in which he delighted; and the ornaments of that flowing, and apparently artless style, which he had studiously cultivated, but which, after all his experience and composition, he adjusted with extreme difficulty to his own taste.” The death of his mother in 1784, who, to an extreme old age, had possessed her faculties unimpaired, with a considerable degree of health, and that of a cousin, who had assisted in superintending his household, in 1788, contributed to frustrate his projects. Though he bore his losses with firmness, his health and spirits gradually declined, and, in July 1790, he died of a chronic obstruction in his bowels, which had been lingering and painful. A few days before his death he gave orders to destroy all his manuscripts, with the exception of some detached essays, which he left to the care of his executors, and which have since been published in one volume 4to, in 1795.

His distresses, says Dr. Johnson, need not be much pitied: his estate is?aid to have been fifteen hundred a year, which by his death devolved to lord Somervile, of Scotland. His mother, indeed, who lived till ninety, had a jointure of six hundred. Dr. Johnson regrets his not being better enabled to exhibit memorials of a writer, who at least must be allowed to have set a good example to men of his own class, by devoting part of his time to elegant knowledge; and who has shewn by the subjects which his poetry has adorned, thn it is practicable to be at once a skilful sportsman and a man of letters. He tried many modes of poetry; and though perhaps he has not in any reached such excellence as to raise much envy, it may commonly be said at least, that “he writes very well for a gentleman.” His serious pieces are sometimes elevated, and his trifles are sometimes elegant. His subjects are commonly such as require no great depth of thought or energy of expression. His fables are generally stale, and therefore excite no curiosity. Of his favourite, The Two Springs, the fiction is unnatural, and the moral inconsequential. In his Tales there is too much coarseness, with too little care of language, and not sufficient rapidity of narration. As a poet, however, he is chiefly known by his “Chace,” which is entitled to great praise as a descriptive poem.

This was the last of Mr. Stillingfleet' s publications; for he died, at his lodgings in Piccadilly opposite Burlingtonhouse, Dec. 15, 1771 (the year this last-me.itioned work was published), aged sixty-nine. He was interred in St. James’s church, where his great nephew Edward Hawke Locker, esq. third son of captain Locker, has recently erected a monument to his memory. The merit most generally attributed to Mr. Stillingfleet is the service which he has rendered to our Natural History and Agriculture. In the present age it may not be deemed a merit in a gentleman, who is at the same time a man of letters, to encourage such pursuits by precept and example; as we have numerous instances of men of the first rank and abilities, who have dedicated their time and labours to the promotion of this branch of useful knowledge. But, in the time of Mr. Stillingfleet, the case was far different; for few men of respectable rank in society were farmers; and still fewer, if any, gave the result of their experience and observations to the public. On the contrary, there seems to have existed among the higher classes a strong prejudice against agricultural pursuits; which Mr. Stillingfleet took some pains to combat, and which, indeed, his example, as well as his precepts, greatly contributed to overcome. As a poet, Mr. Stillingfleet is less known, because few of his compositions were ever given to the public, and those were short, and confined to local or temporary subjects. The “Essay on Conversation” the “Poem on Earthquakes” the dramas and sonnets; will certainly entitle him to a place on the British Parnassus but, when we consider his refined and classical taste, his command of language, his rich and varied knowledge, and the flights of imagination which frequently escape from his rapid pen, we can have no hesitation in asserting, that if, instead of the haste in which he apparently prided himself, he had employed more patience and more assiduous correction, he would have attained no inconsiderable rank among our native poets. Independently of his merits as a naturalist and a poet, he possessed great versatility of genius and multifarious knowledge. His intimate acquaintance with the higher branches of the mathematics, and his skill in applying them to practice, are evident from his treatise on the principles and powers of harmony: and all his works, both printed and manuscript, display various and undoubted proofs of an extensive knowledge of modern languages, both ancient and modern, and a just and refined taste, formed on the best models of classic literature.

, a member of the French academy, was born in 1732, at Clermont in Auvergne, the country of the celebrated Pascal. He received from his mother a severe, and almost a Spartan education. The three children of that estimable woman were brought up chiefly under her own eyes. His two elder brothers died, the one in 1748, the other in 1755, both young men, and both having signalized themselves in literature. Joseph, the eldest, had produced a comedy; and John, the second, excelled in Latin poetry. The death of his second brother, impressed Antony very early with a strong sense of the vanity of worldly cares; and with a profound piety ^ which enhanced the value of his character. He had a decided taste for poetry, but was designed for the bar. In obedience to the wish of his mother, he went to Clermont, to follow a study repugnant to his taste; but going with her to Paris, when John was at the point of death, his friends offered him a professorship in the qoliege of Beauvais. This, therefore, he accepted, as more congenial to his feelings, though less splendid in appearance, than the profession for which he had been designed. He was soon in high estimation for his talents as a poet and an orator; and M. Watelet, a rich man, and a man of letters, offered him a pension as a tribute to his merit; but he chose, with becoming pride, to owe his subsistence to hi own talents, rather than to the generosity of any one: He was afterwards secretary to the duke de Praslin, minister for foreign affairs; secretary to the Swiss cantons (an independent place in the government); and finally secretary to the duke of Orleans. He was also a member of the academy, tho-ugh it is said that he once refused to be chosen, when he found that he was proposed chiefly out of pique to another candidate, M. Marmontel. Without any fortune but his pension from the court, and the trifling reward he received for his assiduous attendance at the academy, he continued to reside at Paris; and latterly, with a sister* who superintended his domestic concerns. But, his health being impaired by excessive application, he was obliged to seek the more favourable climate of Nice, where for a time he recovered the use of all his powers. But his lungs had always been weak, and being seized also with a fever, he died September 17, 1785, in the ho,use of the archbishop of Lyons, and was buried at the neighbouring village of Qulins. At the time of his death he was employed in writing a poem on the czar Peter the Great, styled the “Pe*treade,” which has never been published.

, a man of letters of great emience in the fifteenth century, was born at Rome in 1407. His father was a doctor of civil and common law, and advocate of the apostolic consistory. He was educated at Rome, and learned Greek under Aurispa; but in consequence of the troubles which arose on the death of pope Martin, and the advancement of Eugenius to the papal chair, he retired to Pavia. Here he read lectures on rhetoric, and wrote his three books “De Voluptate ac vero bono.” From thence he removed to Milan, and read the same lectures: and before 1435 read them to Alphonsus, king of Arragon, Sicily, and Naples, that learned patroa of letters, who took minutes of his lectures, and acknowledged his literary obligations to him. While in this place he wrote his book on free-will, against Bbetius, and his detection of the forged gift which Constantine is said to have made, of liome, to pope Sylvester, which was first published in 1492. Here too he translated Homer into Latin, and began his six books of “Elegantiae linguae Latinae.” All this while he had followed Alpbonsus in his wars, and had exposed his person in several sea-fights; and, among his other literary undertakings he had written three books of logical disputations, in which, having reduced the ten predicaments, or elements, to three, he was accused of heretical pravity by the inquisitor-general.

, a man of letters, and one of the first periodical essayists on the continent, was born at Utrecht, April 21, 1684. He was the son of an officer, who had no other fortune than a moderate pension, and as he died before Justus had completed his studies, the latter was left to provide as he could for his mother and a sister. Some friends who took an interest in the family procured him to be appointed tutor to the baron de Welderen’s son, which placed him above want; but as he could not do so much for his family as he wished, he had recourse to his pen for a farther supply. His first publication was “Le Misanthrope,” a periodical paper in imitation of our “Spectator,” which he wrote in French, commencing May 1711, and continuing till December 17 12. In thi he had great, and from what we have seen, deserved success. If he falls short of his model in that delicate humour of Addison, which has never been equalled, he abounds in just remarks on life and manners, evidently derived from extensive observation. Van Effen contrived to conceal himself throughout the whole of this publication, of which a second and improved edition was published at the Hague in 1726, 2 vols. 12mo, to which is added his “Journey to Sweden,” performed in 1719, in the suite of the prince of Hesse PhiJippsthal, who promised to make his fortune, but disappointed him. He consequently returned to the Hague as poor as he left it, and resumed his labours on the “Journal litteraire de la Haye,” in which he had been engaged before his departure. Having got into a literary quarrel with Camusat, who had treated his “Misanthrope” with contempt, he was so much hurt as to be glad to embrace the opportunity of going to Leyden with a young gentleman to whom he was appointed tutor. Here he engaged in some literary schemes by which he got more money than reputation. Count de Welderen, however, having been appointed ambassador to England from the States General, took Van Efien with him as secretary, and on his return procured him the place of inspector of the magazines at Bois-le-Duc, where he died Sept. 18, 1735-. Van Effen’s works were numerous, but being almost all anonymous, it is not easy to ascertain the whole. The following are said to be the principal: 1. “Le Misanthrope,” already noticed. 2. “Journal Litteraire,” 1715 to 1718, many of which volumes are entirely of his editing. 3. “La Bagatelle, ou Discours ironiques, ou Ton prete des sophistries ingenieux au vice et a l'extravagance, pour en mieux faire sentir le ridicule,” Artist. 1718 1719, 3 vols. 8vo, reprinted at Lausanne, 1743, 2 vols. 4. “Le nouveau Spectateur Francais,” of which only twenty-eight numbers appeared; four of them are employed on a critique on the works of Houdard de la Motte, who thanked the author for his impartiality. 5. “The Dutch Spectator,” in Dutch, Amst. 173J 1735, 12 vols. 8vo. 6. “Parallele d'Homere et de Chapelain,” Hague, 1714, 8vo. This has been also printed in the different editions of the “Chef-d‘oeuvre d’un inconnu,” i. e. M. de Themiseuil de St. Hyacinthe. 7. Translations of Robinson Crusoe, Swift’s Tale of a Tub, and some of Mandeville’s writings. 8. “Le Mentor moderne,” a translation of “The Guardian,” except the political papers. 9. “Histoire metallique des dix-sept Provinces de Pays-Bas,” translated from the Dutch of Van Loon, Hague, 1732, 5 vols. Van Effen is said also to have written “Les Petits Maitres,” a comedy; “Essai sur la maniere de trailer la controverse;” and a part of the “Journal historique, politique, et galante.”

, an Italian historian, poet, and critic, was born at- Florence in 1502. His father, a lawyer, placed him with a master, who reported that he was not fit for literature, and advised him to breed the boy up to merchandise. He was accordingly sent to a counting-­house, and there his masters discovered that he never was without a book, and minded nothing but reading. His father then, after examining him, found that he had been deceived by the school-master, and determined to give his son a learned education, and for that purpose sent him to Padua and Pisa. Unfortunately, however, he prescribed the study of the law, which Varchi relished as little as commerce; and although, out of filial respect, he went through the usual courses, he immediately, on his father’s death, relinquished both the study and practice of the law, and determined to devote all his attention to polite literature. In this he acquired great reputation; but when Florence became distracted by civil commotions, he joined the party in opposition to the Medici family, and was banished. During his exile he resided at Venice, Padua, and Bologna, where his talents procured him many friends; and his works having diffused his reputation more widely, Cosmo de Medicis had the generosity to forgive the hostility he had shewn to his family, and, respecting him as a man of letters, recalled him home, and appointed him his historiographer. In this capacity he recommended him to write the history of the late revolutions in Florence. All this kindness, accompanied with a handsome pension, produced a great change in the mind of the republican Varchi, who became now the equally zealous advocate of monarchy. As soon as he had finished a part of it, he submitted it to the inspection of his patron, and some copies were taken of it. These being seen by soma persons who suspected that he would make free with their characters, or the characters of their friends, they conspired to assassinate the apostate author, as they thought him; and having one night attacked him, left him weltering in his blood, but his wounds were not mortal; and although it is said he knew who the assassins were, he declined appearing against them. He was, however, so much affected by the affair, that he embraced the ecclesiastical profession, and obtained some preferment. He died at Florence in 1565. His history, which extends from 1527 to 1538, was not published until 1721, at Cologne, and reprinted at Leydeu 1723; but both these places are wrong, as both editions were published in Italy. There is a recent edition, Milan, 1803, 5 vols. 8vo. The style, like that of all his works, is pure and elegant, though a little too much elaborated. The facts, of course, are strongly tinctured with an attachment to the house of Medici.

, a French writer, more known than esteemed for several historical works, was descended from a good family, and born at Gueret in 1624. After a liberal education, of which he made the proper advantage, he became a private tutor to some young persons of quality; and then went to Paris, where he was well received as a man of letters, and had access to the Dupuy’s, whose house was the common rendezvous of the learned. He obtained afterwards a place in the kings’ library, by his interest with Nicolas Colbert, who was made librarian after the death of James Dupuy in 1655. Mr. Colbert, afterwards minister of state, commissioned his brother Nicolas to find out a man capable of collating certain manuscripts. Varillzte was recommended, and had the abbe" of St. Real for his coadjutor; and handsome pensions were settled upon both. But whether Varillas was negligent and careless, or had not a turn for this employment, he did not give satisfaction, and was therefore dismissed from his employment in 1662; yet had his pension continued till 1670. He then retired from the royal library, and spent the remainder of his days in study, refusing, it is said, several advantageous offers. He lived frugally and with oeconomy, and yet not through necessity, for his circumstances were easy. St. Come was the seat of his retirement; where he died June 9, 1696, aged seventy-two.

Sir Francis Vere was a general of the greatest bravery, and of equal military talents. Queen Elizabeth had an high opinion of him, and always treated him with the greatest respect, often saying that she “held him to be the worthiest captain of her time.” He was a man of letters, as well as an accomplished general, and wrote an account of his principal military transactions, which were published from the author’s original, compared with two other transcripts, in 1657, by William Dillingham, D. D. under the title of “The Commentaries of sir Francis Vere, being divers pieces of service, wherein he had command, written by himself, in way of commentary,” Cambridge, fol. with portraits of sir Francis, and sir Horace Vere, sir John Ogle, and maps and plans, &c. and additions by sir John Ogle, Henry Hexham, Isaac Dorislaus, and the editor.