convocations were held on the subject, but the heads of the college are said to have rejected, with characteristic impatience, a proposal involving a doubt as to the excellence of the course under which the university had so long subsisted, and acquired so substantial and so glorious a renown. The conditions were the avowed obnoxious qualities of the proposal, the rejection of which Warton and Huddesford have made a feeble and quite unsatisfactory attempt to defend. Dr Prideaux felt the value and importance of Dr Busby's proffer, and deeply lamented that any thing should have prevented its being received. Dr Busby's manners were rendered agreeable by his constitutional sternness being mixed with a dash of merriment. The rigid severity of temper exhibited in the school was laid aside in the drawing-room, or pleasingly blended with the mildness of social affability. But even in the school-room his sternness would relax at the discovery of wit or intellectual acumen. The surest and quickest means of attracting his favour was the manifestation of vigorous talent; but mental obtuseness and inertness were persecuted with an unrelenting and sometimes cruel severity. His conversation presented solid learning and extensive knowledge, clothed in the garb of unpretending modesty. His zeal as a churchman, and loyalty as a subject, preserved a steady ardour, unchecked by the turbulence and trials of the times. Over his extensive charity a veil of secrecy was thrown by his unfeigned unaffected piety. The habitual chastity, temperance, and sobriety of his youth secured to his declining years a constitution hale and strong, and a frame unafflicted by the diseases and infirmities commonly attendant on old age; nor did he remit his scholastic duties till removed from his office by the hand of death, which event took place on the 5th of April, 1695.

A statue of him, very correct in resemblance, was affixed to his monument, on which was engraven an inscription to the following effect:" You see below a representation of Busby's body and outward appearance. If you would see his inward qualifications, behold the lights of both universities, and of Westminster-hall, the chief men at court, in the parliament, and in the church. And when you perceive how large, and how plentiful a harvest of ingenious men was sown by him, consider how great was the sower. He was a person very sagacious in finding out every one's genius and disposition, and no less industrious in employing them to advantage, and forwarding them successfully. He was a person who so formed and trained up the minds of youth by his instructions, that they learned at the same time both to speak and to be wise; and whilst they were instructed by him as boys, they insensibly grew up to be men. As many scholars as he sent into the world, so many faithful, and in general brave champions, did the church and state obtain. Whatever reputation Westminster school enjoys, whatever advantage has thence accrued, is chiefly due to Busby, and will for ever be due to him. So useful a man God blessed with long life and crowned with riches. And he, on his part, cheerfully devoted himself and his possessions to the promoting of piety. To relieve the poor; to support and encourage learned men ; to repair churches; that, he thought, was truly enjoying his riches. And what he employed not on those good uses in his life-time, he bequeathed to the same at his death.”

He published grammars for the Westminster school; ex purgata editions of Juvenal and Persius, and of Martial; an Avtodoɣiæ diuriga, and some other philological works. The field of grammatical science has been much widened and more philosophically cultivated since the time of Dr Busby; so that whatever repute his grammars obtained formerly, in the present day they are held in very little esteem.

Joseph Beaumont, D. D.

DIED A. D. 1699.

THIS learned ecclesiastic and poet was descended from a collateral branch of the ancient family of the Beaumonts, from whence sprang Sir John Beaumont, the author of Bosworth Field,' Francis, the celebrated dramatist, and others. He was born at Hadleigh in Suffolk, and educated at the university of Cambridge, where we find him, at the time of the civil war, fellow and tutor of Peterhouse. Being ejected from his offices by the republicans, he retired to his native place, and employed himself in the composition of his Psyche.' On the return of Charles he was reinstated in his former dignities, with the addition of some valuable pieces of preferment which were conferred on him by his patron, the munificent Bishop Wren. He afterwards exercised in succession the offices of master of Jesus and the Peterhouse, and king's professor of divinity, which latter situation he held from 1670 to 1699, the year of his death. One of his biographers describes his character in a long sentence of antithetical eulogy, beginning with "religious without bigotry," and ending with "humble without meanness." "We are not inclined," says a writer in the Retrospective Review, "to question the latter assertion, but the former is more than problematical; although his bigotry was probably more of the heart than the head. He appears, in truth, from his writings, to have been one of a class of characters not uncommon in that age, and which it is impossible to contemplate without a mixture of reverence for their high worth, and regret for the human prejudices and infirmities which rendered that worth, in a great measure, useless; a truly religious and upright, though narrow-minded man, capable of undergoing any sacrifice in defence of principles which he perhaps only imperfectly understood; tenacious to an excess, of the outward forms and observances of religion, yet strenuous in the performance of active duties to a degree not always united with this species of punctiliousness." Besides Psyche,' which appeared first in 1648, and of which a second and posthumous edition was published by his son in 1702, with numerous corrections, and the addition of four cantos by the author, he wrote several smaller poems in English and Latin, and a polemical tract in reply to Dr Henry More's Mystery of Godliness.' He also composed a number of theological works, the bulk of which are still in manuscript, owing to a provision in his will to that effect, but his remarks on St Paul's Epistle to the Colossians were printed in 4to. in 1749.

John Aubrey.

BORN A. D. 1626.-DIED A. D. 1700.

JOHN AUBREY, an eminent naturalist and antiquarian, was descended from an ancient family in Wiltshire, and was born at Easton-Piers in 1626, and educated at Trinity-college, Cambridge. He made the history and antiquities of England his peculiar study, and contributed considerable assistance to the Monasticon Anglicanum.' He succeeded to several good estates; but law-suits and other misfortunes consumed them all, and he was ultimately reduced to absolute want, whilst, to add to his misfortunes, his marriage proved very unhappy. In this extremity he found a valuable benefactress in the Lady Long of Draycot in Wilts, who gave him a residence in her house, and supported him till his death, which happened in 1700. Aubrey was a man of considerable ability and learning, but credulcus and tinctured with superstition. His 'Miscellanies' is a very curious book on the most gloomy and portentous subjects-day fatality, local fatality, impulses, apparitions, blows invisible, dreams, transportation through the air, second sight, &c. In 1719, was published, in 5 vols. 8vo., with additions by Dr Rawlinson, A Perambulation of the county of Surrey,' which he had left behind him in manuscript. Besides these, he left many pieces in manuscript, among which are 'Monumenta Britannica, or a Discourse concerning Stonehenge and Roll-Rich Stones in Oxfordshire,' a work written by command of Charles II.; and Architectonica Sacra, or a Dissertation concerning the manner of church building in England.' In 1813, his 'Lives of Eminent men, and a collection of Letters,' were published from the originals preserved in the Bodleian library, in 3 vols. 8vo.; and in 1821, his Collections for Wilts,' in 4to. The lives are replete with curious matter; that of Hobbes in particular, who was his early and intimate friend, is very full and elaborate. It is surprising that his intimacy with this great philosophical sceptic did not drive him out of many of those superstitious ideas which he seems to have delighted in to the last. Besides his intimacy with Hobbes, Aubrey was the friend and associate of Harrington, the author of 'Oceana,' with whom he was in the habit of frequenting a political club termed by Anthony Wood 'the Gang,' in which the politics of the day were freely discussed. Gifford treats Aubrey with a bare measure of justice when he says of him, in his life of Ben Jonson, "Whoever expects a rational account of any fact, however trite, from Aubrey, will meet with disappointment." His portrait by Loggan is in the Ashmolean museuin, and has been engraved by Caulfield. It is also prefixed to his history of Surrey; and is engraved by Cooke in Malcolm's Lives,''

1 Biog. Brit.