Archibald Pitcairne (1652-1713), the chief physician of his day in Edinburgh, and professor for a while at Leyden, was born in Edinburgh, and educated at Edinburgh and Paris. He was notable also in the Scotland of Queen Anne's time as a Latinist, a Jacobite and Episcopalian, and a satirical opponent of the Kirk. The most memorable of his Latin poems, published by Ruddiman in 1727, is the epitaph on Claverhouse, freely translated by Dryden in these lines : Oh last and best of Scots! who didst maintain Nor wouldst thou her, nor could she thee survive. Farewell! who dying didst support the State, And couldst not fall but with thy country's fate. Pitcairne is also credited with the authorship of The Assembly, a scurrilous comedy satirising the Presbyterian clergy in general, and the proceedings at the recalcitrant General Assembly of 1692 in particular. It is a dull and coarse production, though with occasional effective hits. Thus, when one of the persons in it suggests that the Episcopalian curates shall not be expelled as a class but treated each on his own merits, a high-flying minister is made to ask: 'Did Joshua, when he extirpated idolaters, cite every man to personal appearance and give him a copy of the libel beforehand? Did Christ, when He whipt the buyers out of the Temple, take every particular huxter's wife by the lug?' Pitcairne was naturally detested by Presbyterians like Wodrow, who, while admitting his scholarship, has painted him as a profane drunkard and Deist. Pitcarnius Scotus' wrote much (in Latin) on fevers and other medical subjects, had bitter pamphlet feuds with several professional colleagues, and carried on a controversy on fermentation with Astruc, the Belgian physician, who, by calling attention to the varying use of Jehovah and Elohim as the names for God, founded the scientific criticism of the Pentateuch. Pitcairne's library was sold after his death to the Czar Peter the Great. In William Dampier (1652-1715), navigator, was born near Yeovil, and voyaged to Newfoundland, Bantam, Jamaica, and Campeachy Bay. After two years among the lawless logwood-cutters of Yucatan, he joined in 1679 a band of buccaneers who crossed the Isthmus of Darien and ravaged the coast as far south as Juan Fernandez. another expedition (1683), after seizing a Danish ship at Sierra Leone, he coasted along the shores of Chili, Peru, and Mexico, sailing thence across the Pacific, and touching at the Philippines, China, and Australia. Marooned on Nicobar Islands (1688), he made his way in a native canoe to Atcheen, and got back to England (1691), where he published his Voyage round the World (1697), eminently interesting in substance, and in style homely but clear and easily read. He conducted (1699-1700) a voyage of discovery to the South Seas, in which he explored the north-west coast of Australia, as also the coasts of New Guinea and New Britain, giving his name to the Dampier Archipelago and Strait. On the return voyage he was wrecked off Ascension, and until relieved some two months later lived with his crew on turtles and goats. The old buccaneer was a better pilot than commander, and his cruelty to his lieutenant led to his being court-martialled. Yet in 1703 he was reappointed to the command of two privateers (the sailing-master of one of them Alexander Selkirk) to the South Seas, where he was said to have been guilty of drunkenness, brutality, and even cowardice. Dampier returned home at the close of 1707, poor and broken; nor did his angry Vindication re-establish his reputation. Next year he sailed again as pilot to a privateer, which rescued Selkirk, and returned in 1711 after a prosperous voyage. In the portrait of Dampier, 'a rough sailor but a man of exquisite mind,' Coleridge in the Table Talk insisted that he could trace that something feminine discoverable in the countenances of all men of genius.' Coleridge, who probably knew much less about the buccaneerhydrographer than Dr Laughton, would on account hear of his being called a pirate. The passage below from the 1683 voyage obviously contributed (as well as the experiences of Selkirk, published 1712) in not a few particulars to Defoe's great picture (1719) of a solitary's life on the island of Juan Fernandez. no Both we and Capt. Eaton being bound for John Fernando's Isle, we kept company, and we spared him bread and beef, and he spared us water, which he took in as he passed thro' the Streights [of Magellan]. March the 22d 1684, we came in sight of the island, and the next day got in and anchored in a bay at the south-end of the island, and 25 fathom water, not two cables length from the shore. We presently got out our canoa, and went ashore to seek for a Moskito Indian, whom we left here when we were chased hence by three Spanish ships in the year 1681, a little before we went to Arica; Capt. Watlin being then our commander, after Capt. Sharp was turned out. This Indian lived here alone above three years, and altho' he was several times sought after by the Spaniards, who knew he was left on the island, yet they could never find him. He was in the woods, hunting for goats, when Captain Watlin drew off his men, and the ship was under sail before he came back to shore. He had with him his gun and a knife, with a small horn of powder, and a few shot; which being spent, he contrived a way by notching his knife, to saw the barrel of his gun into small pieces, wherewith he made harpoons, lances, hooks and a long knife, heating the pieces first in the fire, which he struck with his gun-flint, and a piece of the barrel of his gun, which he hardned; having learnt to do that among the English. The hot pieces of iron he would hammer out and bend as he pleased with stones, and saw them with his jagged knife; or grind them to an edge by long labour, and harden them to a good temper as there was occasion. All this may seem strange to those that are not acquainted with the sagacity of the Indians; but it is no more than these Moskito men are accustomed to in their own country, where they make their own fishing and striking instruments, without either forge or anvil; tho' they spend a great deal of time about them. Other wild Indians who have not the use of iron, which the Moskito men have from the English, make hatches of a very hard stone, with which they will cut down trees (the cotton-tree especially, which is a soft tender wood), to build their houses or make canoas; and tho' in working their canoas hollow, they cannot dig them so neat and thin, yet they will make them fit for their service. This their digging or hatchet-work they help out by fire, whether for the felling of trees, or for making the inside of their canoa hollow. These contrivances are used particularly by the savage Indians of Blewfield's River, described in the 3d Chapter, whose canoas and stonehatches I have seen. These stone-hatches are about 10 inches long, 4 broad, and three inches thick in the middle. They are grownd away flat and sharp at both ends right in the midst and clear round it they make a notch, so wide and deep that a man might place his finger along it, and taking a stick or withe about 4 foot long, they bind it round the hatchet-head, in that notch, and so twisting it hard, use it as an handle or helve; the head being held by it very fast. Nor are other wild Indians less ingenious. Those of Patagonia, particularly, head their arrows with flint, cut or ground; which I have seen and admired. But to return to our Moskito man on the isle of J. Fernando. With such instruments as he made in that manner, he got such provision as the island afforded; either goats or fish. He told us that at first he was forced to eat seal, which is very ordinary meat, before he had made hooks: but afterwards he never killed any seals but to make lines, cutting their skins into thongs. He had a little house or hut half a mile from the sea, which was lin'd with goats skin; his couch or barbecu of sticks lying along about two foot distant from the ground, was spread with the same, and was all his bedding. He had no cloaths left, having worn out those he brought from Watlin's ship, but only a skin about his waist. He saw our ship the day before we came to an anchor, and did believe we were English, and therefore kill'd three goats in the morning, before we came to an anchor, and drest them with cabbage, to treat us when we came ashore. He came then to the sea-side to congratulate our safe arrival. And when we landed, a Moskito Indian, named Robin, first leap'd ashore, and running to his brother Moskito man, threw himself flat on his face at his feet, who helping him up, and embracing him, fell flat with his face on the ground at Robin's feet, and was by him taken up also. We stood with pleasure to behold the surprize, and tenderness, and solemnity of this interview, which was exceedingly affectionate on both sides; and when their ceremonies of civility were over, we also that stood gazing at them drew near, each of us embracing him we had found here, who was overjoyed to see so many of his old friends come hither, as he thought purposely to fetch him. He was named Will, as the other was Robin. These were names given them by the English, for they had no names among themselves; and they take it as a great favour to be named by any of us; and will complain for want of it, if we do not appoint them some name when they are with us saying of themselves they are poor men, and have no name. This island is in lat. 34 d. 45 m. and about 120 leagues from the main. It is about 12 leagues round, full of high hills and small pleasant valleys, which if manured, would probably produce any thing proper for the climate. The sides of the mountains are part savannahs, part woodland. Savannahs are clear pieces of land without woods; not because more barren than the wood-land, for they are frequently spots of as good land as any, and often are intermixt with wood-land. . . . The grass in these savannahs at John Fernando's is not a long flaggy grass, such as is usually in the savannahs in the West-Indies, but a sort of kindly grass, thick and flourishing the biggest part of the year. The woods afford divers sorts of trees; some large and good timber for building, but none fit for masts. The cabbage-trees of this isle are but small and low, yet afford a good head, and the cabbage very sweet. This tree I shall describe in the Appendix, in the Bay of Campeachy. The savannahs are stocked with goats in great herds: but those that live on the east-end of the island are not so fat as those on the west-end; for though there is much more grass, and plenty of water in every valley, nevertheless they thrive not so well here as on the west-end, where there is less food; and yet there are found greater flocks, and those too fatter and sweeter. That west-end of the island is all high champion ground without any valley, and but one place to land; there is neither wood nor any fresh water, and the grass short and dry. Goats were first put on the island by John Fernando, who first discovered it on his voyage from Lima to Baldivia (and discovered also another island about the same bigness, 20 leagues to the westward of this). From those goats these were propagated, and the island hath taken its name from this its first discoverer, who when he returned to Lima, desired a patent for it, designing to settle here; and it was in his second voyage hither that he set ashore three or four goats, which have since by their increase so well stock'd the whole island. But he could never get a patent for it, therefore it lies still destitute of inhabitants, tho' doubtless capable of maintaining 4 or 500 families, by what may be produced off the land only. I speak much within compass; for the savannahs would at present feed 1000 head of cattle, besides goats, and the land being cultivated would probably bear corn, or wheat, and good pease, yams, or potatoes; for the land in their valleys and sides of the mountains is of a good black fruitful mould. The sea about it is likewise very productive of its inhabitants. Seals swarm as thick about this island as if they had no other place in the world to live in; for there is not a bay nor rock that one can get ashore on but is full of them. Sea-lions are here in great companies, and fish, particu larly snappers and rock-fish, are so plentiful, that two men in an hour's time will take with hook and line as many as will serve 100 men. . . . There are only two bays in the whole island where ships may anchor; these are both at the east-end, and in both of them is a rivulet of good fresh water. Either of these bays may be fortified with little charge, to that degree that 50 men in each may be able to keep off 1000; and there is no coming into these bays from the west-end, but with great difficulty, over the mountains, where if 3 men are placed, they may keep down as many as come against them on any side. This was partly experienced by 5 Englishmen that Capt. Davis left here, who defended themselves against a great body of Spaniards who landed in the bays, and came here to destroy them; and tho' the second time one of their consorts deserted and fled to the Spaniards, yet the other four kept their ground, and were afterwards taken in from hence by Capt. Strong of London. We remained at John Fernando's sixteen days; our sick men were ashore all the time, and one of Captain Eaton's doctors (for he had four in his ship) tending and feeding them with goat and several herbs, whereof here is plenty growing in the brooks; and their diseases were chiefly scorbutick. The article on Dampier in the Dictionary of National Biography is by Dr Laughton; and there is a Life by Mr Clark Russell (1889). Richard Bentley (1662-1742), born of yeoman parentage at Oulton near Leeds, passed from Wakefield grammar-school to St John's College, Cambridge, in 1676, as subsizar, and in 1682 was appointed by his college head-master of Spalding grammar-school. As tutor to the son of Stillingfleet, then Dean of St Paul's, he accompanied his pupil in 1689 to Oxford, where he was twice appointed to deliver the Boyle Lectures on the Evidences of Religion. He had taken orders in 1690, and to Stillingfleet he owed various good ecclesiastical preferments, with the post of royal librarian at St James's. His Letter to Mill (1691) on the Greek chronicler John Malelas is itself a masterpiece; but it was the Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris (1699), an expansion of an earlier essay, that established his reputation throughout Europe, and may be said to mark a new era in scholarship. The origin and course of this Battle of the Books is sketched in Vol. I. of this work in connection with Sir William Temple (page 754). The essay is not merely a monument of erudition, a triumph of penetrative insight in the new art of making accurate philosophy elucidate history, but a great literary masterpiece, in which trenchant argument is enlivened by keen and plentiful wit and satire. The style is direct and simple, with many homely phrases. In 1700 Bentley was appointed Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. The history of his mastership is an unbroken series of quarrels and litigations, provoked by his arrogance and rapacity; but when in 1717 he was made regius professor of Divinity, he contrived to pass scathless through all his controversies. Only death prevented the Bishop of Ely, visitor of Trinity, from depriving him of his mastership (1714); the university senate did deprive him of his degrees (1718); and another bishop pronounced sentence of deposition (1734). But at his death he was in full possession both of degrees and mastership. This stormy life did not impair his literary activity. As 'Phileleutherus Lipsiensis' he attacked Anthony Collins's Discourse of Freethinking with a trenchancy of argument, ripeness of scholarship, and a brilliancy of style such as none of the deistical writers could command. was in these Remarks that he incidentally endorsed the hypothesis that the Homeric poems were put It ness. together from many separate ballads or lays long after their first date of composition, thus partly anticipating Wolf's theory. He edited a number of classical authors-among others, Horace (1711) and Terence (1726)—upon which he bestowed vast labour. Emendations were at once his forte and foible the latter conspicuously in his edition of Paradise Lost (1732). His theory was that Milton's blindness had necessitated the help of an amanuensis who made stupid mistakes, and of an editor who made mistakes as well as wilful alterations and interpolations. These by internal criticism he set himself to correct, with much superfluous acuteThe proposal (1720) to print an edition of the Greek New Testament, in which the received text should be corrected by a careful comparison with the Vulgate and all the oldest existing Greek MSS., was then singularly bold, and evoked violent opposition; in the settling of the New Testament text, his principles were triumphantly carried out by Lachmann. The founder of the school of classical criticism of which Porson illustrated the excellences and the defects, he wielded with equal effect the weapons of textual and of higher criticism. By uncomplimentary remarks on Pope's Homer he incurred the enmity of the translator and a place in the Dunciad, which reflected more ridicule on the jealous poet than on the great critic. One of Bentley's daughters was the mother of Richard Cumberland the dramatist. From the 'Phalaris.' That sophist, whoever he was, that wrote a small book of letters in the name and character of Phalaris (give me leave to say this now, which I shall prove by and by) had not so bad a hand at humouring and personating, but that several believed it was the tyrant himself that talked so big, and could not discover the ass under the skin of that lion; for we find Stobæus quoting the 38, and 67, and 72 of those Epistles, under the title of Phalaris; and Suidas, in the account he gives of him, says he has wrote 'very admirable letters,' ¿iroλà; Javμarías xàvu, meaning those that we are speaking of. And Johannes Tzetzes, a man of much rambling learning, has many and large extracts out of them in his Chiliads; ascribing them all to the tyrant whose livery they wear. These three, I think, are the only men among the antients that make any mention of them; but since they give not the least hint of any doubts concerning their author, we may conclude that most of the scholars of those ages received them as true originals; so that they have the general warrant and certificate for this last thousand years before the restoration of learning. As for the moderns, besides the approbation of those smaller critics that have been concerned in the editions of them, and cry them up of course, some very learned men have espoused and maintained them; such as Thomas Fazellus and Jacobus Cappellus. Even Mr Selden himself draws an argument in chronology from them, without discovering any suspicion or jealousy of a cheat; to whom I may add their latest and greatest advocate, who has honoured them with that most high character, prefixed to this Treatise. Others, indeed, have shewn their distrust of Phalaris's title to them, but are content to declare their sentiment without assigning their reasons. Phalaris, or 'somebody else,' says Cælius Rhodus. 'The Epistles that go under the name of Phalaris,' says Menagius. Some name the very person at whose door they lay the forgery. 'Lucian, whom they commonly mistake for Phalaris,' says Ang. Politianus. The Epistles of Phalaris, if they are truly his, and not rather Lucian's,' says Lilius Greg. Gyraldus, who in another place informs us, that Politian's opinion had generally obtained among the learned of that age, 'The Epistles,' says he of Phalaris, which 'most people attribute to Lucian.' How judiciously they ascribe them to Lucian we shall see better anon, after I have examined the case of Phalaris, who has the plea and right of possession; and I shall not go to dispossess him, as those have done before me, by an arbitrary sentence in his own tyrannical way, but proceed with him upon lawful evidence, and a fair and impartial trial; and I am very much mistaken in the nature and force of my proofs, if ever any man hereafter that reads them persist in his old opinion of making Phalaris an author. The censures that are made from style and language alone are commonly nice and uncertain, and depend upon slender notices. Some very sagacious and learned men have been deceived in those conjectures, even to ridicule. The great Scaliger published a few iambics, as a choice fragment of an old tragedian, given him by Muretus; who soon after confessed the jest, that they were made by himself. Boxhornius wrote a commentary upon a small poem De Lite, supposed by him to be some ancient author's; but it was soon discovered to be Michael Hospitalius's, a late Chancellor of France; so that if I had no other argument but the style to detect the spuriousness of Phalaris's Epistles, I myself, indeed, should be satisfied with that alone; but I durst not hope to convince every body else. I shall begin therefore with another sort of proofs, that will affect the most slow judgments, and assure the most timid or incredulous. Then follows the argument proper, in too great detail for quotation. Bentley's unheard-of liberties with the most perfect passages of Paradise Lost may be well illustrated by his transformation of 'No light, but rather darkness visible' into 'No light but rather a transpicuous gloom;' and by his proposed emendations of the very last lines of the last book (see the last paragraph quoted in Vol. I. p. 703). Addison had suggested that the omission of the last two unforgetable lines— They hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, would make a better close for the poem. Bentley disapproved this suggestion, but asserted that the lines had been utterly corrupted by the editor, and for the reasons given proposed to restore or emend them into woefully different verses: Milton tells us before, that Adam, upon hearing Michael's predictions, was even surcharg'd with joy (xii. 372); was replete with joy and wonder (468); was in doubt whether he should repent of, or rejoice in, his fall (475); was in great peace of thought (558); and Eve herself was not sad, but full of consolation (620). Why then does this distich dismiss our first parents in anguish, and the reader in melancholy? And how can the expression be justified, "with wand'ring steps and slow"? Why wand ring? Erratic steps? Very improper: when in the line before, they were guided by Providence. And why slow? when even Eve profess'd her readiness and alacrity for the journey (614):-“ But now lead on ; In me is no delay." And why "their solitary way"? All words to represent a sorrowful parting; when even their former walks in Paradise were as solitary as their way now there being nobody besides them two, both here and there. Shall I therefore, after so many prior presumptions, presume at last to offer a distich, as close as may be to the author's words, and entirely agreeable to his scheme? "Then hand in hand with social steps their way Through Eden took, with heav'nly comfort cheer'd."" Dyce's edition of Bentley's works (3 vols. 1836-38) is unfinished. See the Life of him by Monk (2 vols. 1833), and the monograph in the English Writers' series by Sir Richard Jebb (1882). The Duke of Buckingham (JOHN SHEFFIELD, often called DUKE OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE-1648-1721) was associated in his latter days with the wits and poets of the reign of Queen Anne, though in spirit he belongs to the previous age. Having succeeded his father as Earl of Mulgrave in 1658, he served with Prince Rupert against the Dutch, and in 1673 became colonel of a regiment of foot. In order to learn the art of war under Marshal Turenne, he made a campaign in the French service. But even amidst the din of arms he did not wholly neglect literary pursuits, and he made himself an accomplished scholar. He was a member of the Privy Council of James II., but acquiesced in the Revolution, and was for three years a member of the Privy Council of William and Mary, with a pension of £3000 and the title of Marquis of Normanby. Sheffield is said to have made love' to Queen Anne when they were both young, and Her Majesty heaped honours on the favourite immediately on her accession to the throne, including the dukedom of the county of Buckingham. He lived in great state in a magnificent house he had built in St James's Park, of which he has given a long description-dwelling with delight on its gardens, terrace, park, and canal, and the rows of goodly elms and limes through which he ap proached his mansion. This stately residence was purchased by George III., and taken down by George IV. to make way for the present royal palace, which still bears the name of Buckingham. Sheffield wrote several poems and prose works, among the latter being an Account of the Revolu tion. Among the former is an Essay on Satire, which Dryden is reported, but erroneously, to have revised. His principal work, however, is his Essay on Poetry, which was published anonymously in 1682; the second edition, enlarged in 1691, received the praises of Roscommon, Dryden, and Pope. This poem was retouched by Pope, and in return some of the last lines of Buckingham were devoted to the praise of the young poet of Windsor Forest. The Essay on Poetry, written in the heroic couplet, seems to have suggested Pope's Essay on Criticism. It is in the style of Roscommon, plain, perspicuous, and sensible, but it contains little or no true poetry-less than many of Dryden's prose essays-and is much of it incredibly commonplace in thought and in word. Out of Shakespeare's Julius Cæsar he manufactured, with the help of some new love scenes and other tags, two model dramas according to his own-and his contemporaries'-notions of good taste. From the 'Essay on Poetry.' No kind of work requires so nice a touch, And, if well finished, nothing shines so much. Number and rhyme, and that harmonious sound For as in rows of richest pearl there lies As wrought with care, yet seem by chance to fall. This poem must be more exactly made, And sharpest thoughts in smoothest words conveyed. And with just pride behold the rest below. To be the utmost stretch of human sense; A work of such inestimable worth, There are but two the world has yet brought forth- Do those mere sounds the world's attention draw! Sir Richard Blackmore (birth year unknown; died 1729) was one of the most fortunate physicians and most severely handled poets of the age. Born of a good family at Corsham in Wiltshire, and educated at Westminster and St Edmund Hall, Oxford, he took his B.A. in 1674. He was in extensive medical practice, was knighted in 1697 by William III., and afterwards made censor of the College of Physicians. In 1695 he published Prince Arthur, an epic poem, which he says he wrote amidst the duties of his profession, 'for the greatest part in coffee-houses, or in passing up and down the streets.' Dryden, whom he had attacked for licentiousness, satirised him for writing 'to the rumbling of his chariot-wheels.' In Prince Arthur Blackmore flattered himself that he had imitated Virgil's manner, angels taking the place of heathen gods in the management of sublunary affairs. In King Arthur (1697) he seems to think he had followed rather the Homeric model. The twelve dreary books of this preposterous epic are devoted wholly to one of the most fabulous of Arthur's exploits as reported by Geoffrey of Monmouth an expedition to support the Christian people of Gaul against certain heathen Franks, in which history, ethnology, and commonsense are alike defied. The principal enemy is the Frankish king Clotar, assumed to be a heathen-though the Franks were converted to Christianity before the end of the fifth century, and Arthur or his prototype seems to have belonged to the sixth. The prince of darkness and his |