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was descended of a most ancient and honourable family, seated at Parkhall, in Warwickshire. He was born' in 1532, and his father dying when he was an infant of two years old, he became, before he inherited the estate of the family, the ward of sir George Throkmorton, of Coughton, whose daughter Mary he afterwards married. In all probability, it was his engagement with this family, and being bred in it, that made him so firm a papist as he was. However, succeeding his grandfather, Thomas Arden, esq. in 1562, in the familyestate, he married Mary (Throkmorton), and settled in the country, his religion impeding his preferment, and his temper inclining him to a retired life. His being a near neighbour to the great earl of Leicester, occasioned his having some altercations with him, who affected to rule all things in that county, and some persons, though of good families, and possessed of considerable estates, thought it no discredit to wear that nobleman’s livery, which Mr. Arden disdained. In the course of this fatal quarrel, excessive insolence on one side produced some warm expressions on the other; insomuch that Mr. Arden npenly taxed the earl with his conversing criminally with the countess of Essex in that earl’s lite-time; and also inveighed against his pride, as a thing more inexcusable in a nobleman newly created. These taunts having exasperated that minister, he projected, or at least forwarded, his destruction. Mr. Arden had married one of his daughters to John Somerville, esq. a young gentleman of an old family and good fortune, in the same county, but who was a man of a hot rash temper, and by many thought a little insane. He was drawn in a strange manner to plot (if it may be so called) against the queen’s life; and thus the treason is alleged to have been transacted. In the Whitsun-holidays, 1583, he with his wife was at Mr. Arden’s, where Hugh Hall, his father-in-law’s priest, persuaded him that queen Elizabeth being an incorrigible heretic, and growing daily from bad to worse, it would be doing God and his country good service to take her life away. When the holidays were over, he returned to his own house with his wife, where he grew melancholy and irresolute. Upon this his wife wrote to Hall, her father’s priest, to come and strengthen his purpose. Hall excused his coming, but wrote at large, to encourage Somerville to prosecute what he had undertaken. This letter induced Somerville to set out for London, but he proceeded no farther than Warwick, where, drawing his sword and wounding some protestaats, he was instantly seized. While he was going to Warwick, his wife went over to her father’s, and shewed him and her mother Hall’s treasonable letter, which her father threw into the fire; so that only the hearsay of this letter could be alleged against him and his wife, by Hall who wrote it, who was tried and condemned with them. On Somerville’s apprehension, he said somewhat of his father and mother-in-law, and immediately orders were sent into Warwickshire for their being seized and imprisoned. October 30, 1583, Mr. Somerville was committed to the Tower for high-treason. November 4, Hall, the priest, was committed also; and on the seventh of the same month, Mr. Arden. On the sixteenth, Mary the wife of Mr. Arden, Margaret their daughter, wife to Mr. Somerville, and Elizabeth, the sister of Mr. Somerville, were committed. On the twenty-third Mr. Arden was racked in the Tower, and the next day Hugh Hall the priest was tortured likewise. By these methods some kind of evidence being brought out, on the sixteenth of December Edward Arden, esq. and Mary his wife, John Somerville, esq. and Hugh Hall the priest, were tried and convicted of high-treason at Guildhall, London; chiefly on Hall’s confession, who yet received sentence with the rest. On the nineteenth of December, Mr. Arden and his son-in-law, Somerville, were removed from the Tower to Newgate, for a night’s time only. In this space Somerville was strangled by his own hands, as it was given out; but, as the world believed, by such as desired to remove him silently. The next day, being December 20, 1583, Edward Arden was executed at Smithfield with the general pity of all spectators. He died with the same high spirit he had shewn throughout his life. After professing his innocence, he owned himself a papist, and one who died for his religion, and want of flexibility, though under colour of conspiring against the state. He strenuously insisted, that Somerville was murdered, to prevent his shaming his prosecutors; and having thus extenuated things to such as heard him, he patiently submitted to an ignominious death. His execution was according to the rigour of the law, his head being set (as Somerville’s also was) upon London-bridge, and his quarters upon the city gates; but the body of his son-in-law was interred in Moornelds. Mrs. Arden was pardoned; but the queen gave the estate which fell to her, by her and her husband’s attainder, to Mr. Darcy. Hugh Hall, the priest, likewise was pardoned; but Leicester, doubting his secrecy, would have engaged chancellor Hatton to send him abroad; which he refusing, new rumours, little to that proud earl’s honour, flew about. Holinshed, Stowe, and other writers, treat Mr. Arden as a traitor fairly convicted; but Camden. was too honest to write thus, and it may be probable, that he died for being a firm Englishman, rather than a bad subject. His son and heir Robert Arden, esq. being bred in one of the inns of court, proved a very wise and fortunate person: insomuch that by various suits he wrung from Edward Darcy, esq. the grantee, most of his father’s estates, and by marrying Elizabeth, daughter of Reginald Corbet, esq. one of the justices of the king’s bench, he restored the credit and splendour of this ancient family, and was so happy as to see Henry Arden, esq. his eldest son, knighted by king James, and married to Dorothy the daughter of Basil Fielding of Kewnham, esq. whose son became earl of Denbigh. On this account, the last editor of the Biographia Britannica remarks, that the conduct of lord Burleigh in Mr. Arden’s fate is somewhat equivocal. If that great man. was convinced of Mr. Arden’s innocence, it was totally unworthy of his character to charge him with having been a traitor. It is more 'honourable, therefore, to lord Burleigh’s reputation, and more agreeable to probability, to suppose that he believed Mr. Arden to be guilty, at least in a certain degree, of evil designs against the queen. Indeed, Arden was so bigoted a papist, that it is not unlikely but that by some imprudent words, if not by actions, he might furnish a pretence for the accusations brought against him. We can scarcely otherwise imagine how it would have been possible for the government to have proceeded to such extremities. We do not mean, by these remarks, to vindicate the severity with which this unfortunate gentleman was treated; and are sensible that, during queen Elizabeth’s reign, there was solid foundation for the jealousy and dread which were entertained of the Roman catholics.

Mr. Baker likewise gave the college lOOl. for the consideration of six pounds a-year (then legal interest) for his life and to the library several choice books, both printed and ms. medals, and coins besides what he left to it by his will which were “all such books, printed and ms. as he had, and were wanting there.” All that Mr. Baker printed was, 1. “Reflections on Learning, shewing the insufficiency thereof in its several particulars, in order to evince the usefulness and necessity of Revelation, London, 1710,” which went through eight editions; and Mr. Boswell, in his “Method of Study,” ranks it among the English classics for purity of style; a character perhaps too high, yet it is a very ingenious work, and was at one time one of the most popular books in our language. Its principal fault is, that the author has too much depreciated human learning, and is not always conclusive in his arguments. 2. “The preface to bishop Fisher’s funeral sermon for Margaret countess of Richmond and Derby, 1708” both without his name. Dr. Grey had the original ms. of both in his own hands. The latter piece is a sufficient specimen of the editor’s skill in antiquities to make us regret that he did not live to publish his “History of St. John’s college, from the foundation of old St. John’s house to the present time; with some occasional and incidental account of the affairs of the university, and of such private colleges as held communication or intercourse with the old house or college collected principally from Mss. and carlied on through a succession of masters to the end of bishop Gunning’s mastership, 1670.” The original, fit for the press, is among the Harleian Mss. No. 7028. His ms collections relative to the history and antiquities of the university of Cambridge, amounting to thirty-nine volumes in folio, and three in 4to, are divided between the British Museum and thfe public library at Cambridge the former possesses twenty-three volumes, which he bequeathed to the earl of Oxford, his friend and patron the latter sixteen, in folio, and three in 4to, which he bequeathed to the university. Dr. Knight styles him “the greatest master of the antiquities of this our university;” and Hearne says, “Optandum est ut sua quoqn^ collectanea de antiquitatibus Cantabrigiensibus juris taciat publici cl. Bakerus, quippe qui eruditione summa judicioque acri et subacto polleat.” Mr. Baker intended something like an Athenae Cantabrigienses on the plan oLthe Athenae Oxonienses. Had he lived to have completed his design, it would have far exceeded that work. With the application and industry of Mr. Wood, Mr. Baker united a penetrating judgment and a great correctness of style, and these improvements of the mind were crowned with those amiable qualities of the heart, candour and integrity. He is very frequently mentioned by the writers of his time, and always with high respect. Although firm in his principles, he corresponded with and assisted men of opposite ways of thinking, and with the utmost readiness made them welcome to his collections. Among his contemporaries who distinguished themselves in the same walk with himself, and derived assistance from him, may be reckoned Mr. Hearne, Dr. Knight, Dr. John Smith, Hilkiah Bedford, Browne Willis, Mr. Strype, Mr. Peck, Mr. Ames, Dr. Middleton, and professor Ward. Two large volumes of his letters to the first of these antiquaries are in the Bodleian library. There is an indifferent print of him by Simon from a xnemoriter picture but a very good likeness of him by C. Bridges. Vertue was privately engaged to draw his picture by stealth. Dr. Grey had his picture, of which Mr. Burton had a copy by Mr. Ilitz. The Society of Antiquaries have another portrait of him. It was his custom, in every book he had, or read, to write observations and an account of the author. Of these a considerable number are at St. John’s college, and several in the Bodleian library, among Dr. Rawiinson’s bequests. A fair transcript of his select ms observations on Dr. Drake’s edition of archbishop Parker, 1729, was some time ago in the hands of Mr. Nichols. Dr. John Bedford of Durham had Mr. Baker’s copy of the “Hereditary Right,” greatly enriched by him. Dr. Grey, who was advised with about the disposal of the books, had his copy of Spelman’s Glossary. Mr. Crow married a sister of Mr. Baker’s nephew, Burton; and, on Burton’s death intestate in the autumn after his uncle, became possessed of every thing. What few papers of Mr. Baker’s were among them, he let Mr. Smith of Burnhall see and they being thought of no account, were destroyed, excepting the deed concerning the exhibitions at St. John’s, his own copy of the historyof the college, notes on the foundress’s funeral sermon, and the deed drawn for creating him chaplain to bishop Crew, in the month and year of the revolution, the day left blank, and the deed unsubscribed by the bishop, as if rejected by him.

About 1740, he returned to England, where he spent the remainder of his days. His principal patrons, for whom he painted many hundred plants, were Taylor “White, esq. Dr. Mead, sir Hans Sloane, Dr. Fothcrgill, and Ralph Willct, esq. of Merly. Many of these paintings were executed on vellum; and engravings were made from his paintings for various works, particularly Dr. Trew’s” Plantae Selectee,“and Brown’s” History of Jamaica." The latter, however, having been taken from prepared and dried specimens, cannot be numbered among his capital performances. His ingenuity and knowledge of nature raised him to a degree of reputation among the literati, and obtained him the distinction of being chosen a fellow of the royal society in 1757. Besides the profits accruing from the numerous exhibitions of his pencil, he applied for many years with great assiduity to the business of teaching his art; and if his ingenuity did not meet with a reward equal to his merit, yet his labours in the end proved sufficiently lucrative to afford him a moderate independence; though to the last he ceased not to employ his pencil. He died in Sept. 1770. Mr. Ehret married the sister of Mr. Philip Miller, of Chelsea, by whom he left one son.

, sister of Mr. William Elstob, and engaged in the same learned pursuits, was born at Newcastle, Sept. 29, 1683. It is said, that she owed the rudiments of her extraordinary education to her mother; of which advantage, however, she was soon deprived; for at the age of eight years she had the misfortune of losing this intelligent parent. Her guardians, who entertained different sentiments, discouraged as much as they were able her progress in literature, as improper for her sex; but she had contracted too great a fondness for literary studies to be diverted from the prosecution of them. During her brother’s continuance at Oxford, she appears to have resided in that city, where she was esteemed and respected by Dr. Hudson and other Oxonians. Upon her brother’s removal to London, she probably removed with him; and, it is certain, that she assisted him in his antiquarian undertakings. The first public proof which she gave of it was in 1709, when, upon Mr. Elstob’s printing the homily on St. Gregory’s day, she accompanied it with an English translation. The preface, too, was written by her, in which she answers the objections made to female learning, by producing that glory of her sex, as she calls her, Mrs. Anna Maria Schurman. Mrs. Elstob’s next publication was a translation of madame Seudery’s “t-ssay on Glory.” She assisted, also, her brother in an edition of Gregory’s pastoral, which was probably intended to have included both the original and Saxon version; and she had transcribed all the hymns, from an ancient manuscript in Salisbury cathedral. By the encouragement of Dr. Hickes, she undertook a Saxon Homilarium, with an English translation, notes, and various readings. To promote this design, Mr. Bowyer printed for her, in 1713, “Some testimonies of learned men, in favour of the intended edition of the Saxon Homilies, concerning the learning of the author of those homilies, and the advantages to be hoped for from an edition of them. In a letter from the publisher to a doctor in divinity.” About the same time she wrote three letters to the lord treasurer, from which it appears, that he solicited and obtained for her queen Anne’s bounty towards printing the homilies in question. Her majesty’s decease soon deprived Mrs. Elstob of this benefit; and she was not otherwise sufficiently patronized, so as to be able to complete the work. A lew only of the homilies were actually printed at Oxford, in folio. Mrs. Elstob’s portrait was given in the initial letter G of “The English. Saxon Homily on the Birth-day of St, George.” In 1715, she published a Saxon grammar, the types for which had been cut at the expence of the lord chief justice Parker, afterwards earl of Macclesfield. Mrs. Elstob had other literary designs in view, but was prevented from the prosecution of them, by her distressed circumstances, and the want of due encouragement. After her brother’s death, she was so far reduced, that she was obliged to retire to Evesham in Worcestershire, where she subsisted with difficulty by keeping a small school. In this situation she experienced the friendship of Mr. George Ballard, and of Mrs. Capon, wife of the rev. Mr. Capon, who kept a boarding-school at Sianton, in Gloucestershire. These worthy persons exerted themselves among their acquaintance, to obtain for Mrs. Elstub some annual provision. At length she was recoiflmended to queen Caroline, who granted her a pension of twenty guineas a year. This being discontinued on the queen’s decease, Mrs. Elstob was again brought into difficulties, and, though mistress of eight languages, besides her own, was obliged to seek for employment as a preceptress of children. She may, however, be considered as having been very fortunate in the situation which she obtained in this capacity; for, in 1739, she was taken into the family of the duchess Dowager of Portland, where she continued till her death, which happened on the 30th of May 1756. She was buried at St. Margaret’s, Westminster. Mr. Rowe Mores describes her as having been the indefessa comes of her brother’s studies, and a female student of the university; and as having originally possessed a genteel fortune, which, by pursuing too much the drug called learning, she did not know how to manage. He adds, that upon visiting her in her sleeping-room at Bulstrode, he found her surrounded with books and dirtiness. She was, however, one of the most extraordinary women of her age, the first, and as far as we know, the last of her sex, who was a Saxon scholar. A more particular account of her Mss. and other productions is given in our first authority.

, descended from a family long situated at Somersham-place, in Huntingdonshire, was born in 16u3, and educated at St. John’s college, Cambridge. He was a commissioner of the navy, a good speaker in parliament, had the name of “silver-tongued Hammond” given him by lord Bolingbroke, and was a man of note among the wits, poets, and parliamentary writers, in the beginning of the last century. A volume of “Miscellany Poems,” was inscribed to him, in 1694, by his friend Mr. Hopkins; and in 1720 he was the editor of “A new Miscellany of Original Poems,” in which he had himself no small share. His own pieces, he observes in his preface, “were written at very different times, and were owned by him, lest in a future day they should be ascribed to other persons to their prejudice, as the ‘ Ode on Solitude’ has been, in wrong, to the earl of Roscommon, and as some of the rest have been to others.” He was the intimate friend of Mr. Moyle, and wrote the “Account of his Life and Writings,” prefixed to his works in 1727. Their acquaintance began, through sir Robert Marsham, in the latter end of 1690, soon after Hammond’s return from a short tour into Holland and some parts of Flanders. The places of resort for wits at that period were May n waring' s coifee-house in Fleet-street, and the Grecian near the Temple; where Moyle, having taken a disgust against the clergy, had several friendly disputes with Hammond, and at the same place had a share with Trenchard in writing the argument against a standing army. In Moyle’s works are three valuable letters to Hammond; a copy of verses, by Hammond, to Moyle; another, by Hopkins, to the same; and a third, by Hopkins, to Hammond. Mr. Hammond is said to have married Susanna, a sister of Mr. Walpole, afterwards the celebrated minister of state; but that Mr. Hammond was a different person. Our author married a Miss Clarges, and died in 1738, as Winston informs us, in the Fleet-prison, where he was confined for debt, and so preserved what he had not spent of his estate for his eldest son. His second son is the subject of the following article.

In 1770, Mr. Mylne married miss Mary Home, sister of Mr. Home, the surgeon, by whom he had nine children. Of these one son, his successor as engineer of the New River Company, and four daughters, now survive him.

In 1795, Mr. Porson married Mrs. Lunan, the sister of Mr. Perry, the proprietor and conductor of the Morning Chronicle, which had to boast of many of his fugitive pieces. This lady died, in consequence of a decline, in April 1797. He had long before enjoyed the friendship of her brother, who for many years contributed more to the comfort of Mr. Person’s life than any one man we are able to mention. Porson had a proud and independent spirit; it was difficult, therefore, to confer an obligation on him, although his situation rendered many such necessary but Mr. Perry, by a thousand acts of kindness, had completely engaged his confidence, and had the art of conferring his favours in a manner which removed the painful sense of obligation. Porson knew that Mr. Perry was perfectly disinterested, and accepted from him what he would have rejected with indignation if offered by one who assumed the airs of the patron; and Mr. Perry, by carefully studying his temper, was enabled to anticipate his wishes, and on various occasions contrived to exercise a salutary controul over his failings, which his delicacy and judgment rendered imperceptible.

His first wife was Martha Wilde, daughter of Mr. Ailington Wilde, printer, in Clerkenwell, by whom he had five sons and a daughter, who all died young. His second wife (who survived him many years) was Elizabeth sister of Mr. Leake, bookseller, of Bath. By her he had a son and five daughters. The son died young; but four of the daughters survived him; viz. Mary, married in 1757 to Mr. Ditcher, an eminent surgeon of Bath; Martha, married in 1762 to Edward Bridgen, esq. F. R. and A. Ss.; Anne, unmarried; and Sarah, married to Mr. Crowther, surgeon of Boswell-court. All these, are now dead.

For his profession in life, Mr. Waring chose the study of medicine, and proceeded a doctor in that faculty in 1767. In 1771 he appears in the list of physicians to Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge; and about this time practised in the neighbouring town of St. Ives. But though he followed this pursuit with characteristicai assiduity, and attended lectures and hospitals in London, he never enjoyed extensive practice. Of this he was the less careful, as, in addition to the emoluments, which are considerable, of his professorship, he possessed a very handsome patri­' monial fortune, while his favourite science supplied him with an inexhausible fund of amusement and occupation. In 1776 he entered into a matrimonial connexion with miss Mary Oswell, sister of Mr. William Oswell, a respectable draper in Shrewsbury; and not many years afterwards retired from the university, first to a house in Shrewsbury, and at length to his own estate at Plealey, near Pontesbury. The mathematical inquiries which had occupied so large a portion of his early lite, he still continued to cultivate with undiminished diligence; and he also occasionally indulged in philosophical excursions of a more popular and intelligible class. The result of these he collected in a volume printed at Cambridge, in 1794, with the title of “An Essay on the Principles of Human Knowledge.” Under this comprehensive title are contained his opinions on a great variety of subjects. But this book, in the front of which he designates himself as fellow of the Royal Society of London, and of those of Bologna and Gottingen, was never published. Thus passed the even tenour of Dr. Waring’s life, interrupted occasionally by a visit to the Board of Longitude, in London, of which he was a member, and from which he always returned with an encreased relish for his country retreat at Plealey: and here he might have promised himself many years of life and health, when his career was terminated by a short illness, produced by a violent cold caught in superintending some additions which he was making to his house. He died on the 15th of August, 1798, in the sixty-fourth year of his age.