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, born in 1645,at Spires, was at first professor of medicine, and then first physician to the elector of Mentz, and afterwards to him of Bavaria. He went to London, where his reputation had got before him, and where the malice of his rivals had forced him to seek an asylum, and here he died in 1685. His works are various, among which we may distinguish the following: 1. “Physica subterranea,” Frankfort, 1669, 8vo, reprinted at Leipsic, 1703, and in 1759, 8vo. 2. “Experimentum Chymicum novum,” Frankfort, 1671, 8vo. 3. “Character pro notitia linguarum universali;” a universal language, by means whereof all nations might easily understand each other the fanciful idea of a man of genius. 4. “Institntiones Chymicse, seu manuductio ad pjiilosophiam hermeticam,” Mentz, 1662, 8vo. 5. “Institutiones GhymictE prodromye,” Frankfort, 1664, and Amsterdam, 1665, 12mo. 6. “Experimentum novum ac curiosum de Minera arenaria perpetua,” Frankfort, 1680, 8vo. 7. “Epistohe Chymicae,” Amsterdam, 1673, 8vo. Becher was reputed to be a very able machinist and a good chymist. He was a man of a lively te-mper, impetuous and headstrong, and therefore indulged jn a thousand chymical reveries. He was the first who applied the art of chymistry, in all its extent, to philosophy, and shewed what use might be made of it in explaining the structure, the combinations, and the mutual relations of hodies. He pretended to have found out a sort or‘ perpetual motion. However, it is beyond a doubt ’that the world is indebted to him for some useful discoveries, and he attempted to make some improvements in the art of printing.

, a dissenting divine of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a wit himself, and “the cause of wit in other men,” particularly dean Swift and his contemporaries, was born in 1645 at Staines in Middlesex, where his father then was minister, but was afterwards, at the restoration, ejected for nonconformity from the living of Collingbourne Ducis, in Wiltshire. Daniel was educated at Westminster school, and in 1660 went to Magdalen-hall, Oxford, but having some scruples of the nonconformist stamp, he left the university without a degree. It would appear, however, that he had taken orders, as we are told that immediately after he was invited to be chaplain to a gentleman of Chute in Wiltshire, and afterwards to a Mr. Smith of Tedworth, where he was tutor to that gentleman’s son. In 1667, the earl of Orrery, lord president of Munster, took Mr. Burgess over to Ireland, and appointed him master of a school which he had established at Charleville for the purpose of strengthening the protestant interest in that kingdom, and Mr. Burgess, while here, superintended the education of the sons of some of the Irish nobility and gentry. After leaving this school, he was chaplain to lady Mervin, near Dublin; but about this time, we are told, he was ordained in Dublin as a presbyterian minister, and married a Mrs. Briscoe in that city, by whom he had a son and two daughters.