much. The New Testament and the Book of Common Prayer were already put in the Irish tongue: but he resolved to have the whole Bible, the Old Testament as well as the New, put also into the hands of the Irish; and, therefore, he laboured much to find out one, that understood the language so well that he might be employed in so sacred a work: and by the advice of the Primate and several other eminent persons he pitched on one King, that had been converted many years before, and was believed to be the elegantest writer of the Irish tongue then alive, both for prose and poetry. He was then about seventy; but notwithstanding his age, and the disadvantages of his education, yet the Bishop thought him not only capable of this employment, but qualified for an higher character: therefore he put him in orders, and gave him a benefice in his diocese, and set him to work in order to the translating of the Bible; which he was to do from the English translation, since there were none of the nation to be found, that knew any thing of the originals. The Bishop set himself so much to the revising of this work, that always after dinner or supper he read over a chapter: and as he compared the Irish translation with the English, so he compared the English with the Hebrew and the Seventy Interpreters, or with Diodati's Italian translation which he valued highly; and he corrected the Irish, where he found the English translators had failed. He thought the use of the Scriptures was the only way to let the knowledge of religion in among the Irish, as it had first let the Reformation into the other parts of Europe; and he used to tell a passage of a sermon that he heard Fulgentio preach at Venice, with which he was much pleased: it was

on these words of Christ, Have ye not read? and so he took occasion to tell the auditory, that if Christ were now to ask this question, Have ye not read? All the answer they could make to it was, No;' for they were not suffered to do it. Upon which, he taxed with great zeal the restraint put on the use of the Scriptures by the See of Rome. This was not unlike what the same person delivered, in another sermon, preaching upon Pilate's question, What is Truth? He told them that at last after many searches he had found it out, and held out a New Testament, and said there it was in his hand:' but then he put it in his pocket and said coldly, 'But the book is prohibited;' which was so suited to the Italian genius, that it took mightily with the auditory. The Bishop had observed, that in the primitive times as soon as nations, how barbarous soever they were, began to receive the Christian Religion, they had the Scriptures translated into their vulgar tongues; and that all people were exhorted to study them: therefore he not only undertook and began this work, but followed it with so much industry, that in a very few years he finished the translation, and resolved to set about the printing of it; for the bargain was made with one, that engaged to perform it. And as he had been at the great trouble of examining the translation, so he resolved to run the venture of the impression, and took that expense upon himself. It is scarcely to be imagined, what could have obstructed so great and so good a work. The priests of the Church of Rome had reason to oppose the printing of a book, that has been always so fatal to them; but it was a deep fetch to possess Reformed divines with a jealousy of this work, and with hard thoughts

concerning it. Yet that was done; but by a very well disguised method: for it was said, that the translator was a weak and contemptible man, and that it would expose such a work as this was to the scorn of the nation, when it was known who was the author of it:" and this was infused both into the Earl of Strafford, and into the Archbishop of Canterbury.'

A Letter from Dr. G. Burnet to the Marchioness of Wharton, in it's conclusion contains what he calls Conceits swimming in his Thoughts when he wrote last;' but "I had not the leisure," he adds, " to make them chime right."

• PERHAPS the Sisters, moved with high disdain
To see themselves outdone by such a strain,
Refuse to give the finishings of skill

To one, whom Nature furnishes so well.
Wit, Fancy, Judgement, Memory agree
To raise in you a perfect harmony:
Wit gives the treble notes, so brisk, so high;
A copious Fancy makes them gently fly,
And gives a killing sweetness to your song;

The base is Judgement deep, and clear, and strong

All fitly set, who can resist them long?

The Muses, here, may well their labour spare;

You are above their skill, beyond their care:

Or, if they haunt you, 'tis not to inspire,
But to take heat at your ethereal fire;

From whence they carry sparks to some cold brain,
And dart a flame that imitates your strain.
But flat and languid is a forced heat;
'Tis hardly kindled, and doth feebly beat.

Thus do the Muses, that about you fly,
Learning new strains like those above the sky,
Come and reproach all, that about the town
The glorious name of Poets boldly own.
They, with an art like yours, your song do sing:
The Poets damp'd give o'er, their harps unstring;

}

Their ill-deserved titles they lay down,
And join their laurels to adorn your crown.
Thus they, inspired with your well-guided rage
(Some spite of all defects, some spite of age)
No other themes they'll any more pursue:
On you they employ their art, out-done by you.'

107

JOHN FLAMSTEED.*

[1646-1719.]

THIS celebrated Astronomer and Mathematician was the son of Stephen Flamsteed, a substantial yeoman of Denby, a village in Derbyshire, where he was born in the year 1646. From his infancy he had a natural tenderness of constitution, which he was never able to surmount. He was educated at the Free School of Derby; and at fourteen years of age was afflicted with a severe fit of sickness, which being followed by many other indispositions, prevented his proceeding (as had been intended) to the University.

Within a short period of his leaving school in 1662, he received the loan of John de Sacrobosco's book De Sphæra,' which he set himself to study without any instructor. This accident laid the groundwork of all that knowledge, by which he subsequently became so distinguished. He had already perused many volumes of history, ecclesiastical as well as civil; but this subject was entirely new to him, and he was greatly delighted with it. After translating from his author what he thought necessary into English, he

* AUTHORITIES. Biographia Britannica; New General Biographical Dictionary; British Biography; and Keill's Preface to his Introduction to the True Philosophy.