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Beside the works already mentioned, in 1727 appeared a Table of the Assays of Foreign Coins drawn up by him, and printed at the end of Dr. Arbuthnot's book on that subject. And the next year, came out his Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms amended: to which is prefixed a Short Chronicle from the first memory of Things in Europe, to the Conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great.' After this, were published his Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John,' in 1733; which, though unfinished, discovered in some of it's parts the hand of a master.

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In 1734, Dr. Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne in Ireland, in a piece entitled, The Analyst,' attacked his Method of Fluxions, as obscure and unintelligible; the doctrine of movements, upon which it was founded, necessarily as he contended involving a notion of infinity of which we can form no comprehensible or adequate idea, and therefore being unsuitable for geometrical disquisitions. This gave rise to a controversy, which occasioned the republication of Newton's Method of Fluxions, and Analysis by Infinite Series.'*

In 1737, was printed an English translation of his Latin Dissertation upon the Sacred Cubit of the Jews. It was found subjoined to an incomplete work of his entitled, Lexicon Propheticum.'

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In 1742, appeared his Tables for purchasing

* This treatise, translated from the Latin original into English, and printed in 1736 with a perpetual commentary, by Mr. John Colson (afterward Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge) contained, among other things, A Defence of the Method against the Objections of Dr. Berkeley. See the Life of Dr. B.

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College Leases; and, two years afterward, was published at Lausanne Newtoni Is. Opuscula Mathematica Philosophica et Philologica collegit J. Castilioneus, in eight volumes quarto. In 1745, Mr. John Stewart gave to the world an English translation of his Two Treatises on the Quadrature of Curves, and Analysis by Equations of an infinite number of Terms,' in quarto, accompanied with a large commentary: and, in 1746, were printed his Elementa Perspectiva Universalis, in octavo.

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Lastly, in 1756, were published Four Letters from Sir Isaac Newton to Dr. Bentley; containing some Arguments in Proof of a Deity.'

280

SIR RICHARD STEELE.*

[1676-1729.]

SIR RICHARD STEELE was born in Dublin, about the year 1676. † A branch of his family possessed a considerable estate in the county of Wexford; and his father, a counsellor at law, was for some time private secretary to James, first Duke of Ormond. He died, before his son had completed his fifth year. Richard, while very young, was placed at the Charter House School, London, where he first contracted his intimacy with Addison. Thence he removed to Merton College, Oxford, where he was admitted a Post Master in 1692. At the University he gave some specimens of his taste for polite literature, and even proceeded so far as to compose a comedy: but by the advice of a brother-collegian, he had

* AUTHORITIES. Biographia Britannica; British Biography; Cibber's Lives of the Poets; Tatler, with notes, 1786; and Steele's Epistolary Correspondence.

† Others say, 1671.

"I remember," says Steele, when I finished the Tender Husband,' I told him (Addison) there was nothing I so tenderly wished, as that we might some time or other publish a work written by us both, which should bear the name of the 'Monument,' in memory of our friendship." (Spectator 555.)

the good sense to suppress it. As he had great vivacity of disposition, he formed about this time a resolution of entering into the army, and accordingly left Oxford without taking any degree. His military ardor, indeed, was so strong, that not having it in his power to obtain a better situation, he engaged as a private in the horse-guards. This rash step, however, cost him the succession to a very good Irish property.

By nature he was admirably adapted to the profession, which he had chosen. Gay, gallant, and generous, he was distinguished by the brilliancy of his wit, and the courtesy of his manners. These qualities rendered him the delight of the soldiery, and procured him an ensign's commission. But, amidst the seductions by which he was surrounded, he too readily prostituted his fine talents, and his amiable qualities, in the service of licentiousness. Yet his licentiousness flowed not without it's interruptions. Hours of reflexion intervened: and in these it was, that he wrote for his private use a little book called The Christian Hero;* with a design, principally, to correct his propensity to unwarrantable pleasures. But the secret admonition

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* " This work consists chiefly," says Chalmers, " of a review of the characters of some celebrated heathens, contrasted with the life and principles of our blessed Saviour and St. Paul; from which it was his object to prove, that none of the heroic virtues, or true greatness of mind, can be maintained unless upon Christian principles. The language is far from being regular, and perhaps he may seem deficient in powers of argument: but his address has much of that honest zeal and affection, which comes from the heart. It has been often reprinted, and circulated among the middling class of readers." (Biograph. Pref. to the Tatler, in his British Essayists.')

of this treatise, while it was confined to his own hands, proving weak and ineffectual, he determined to print it with his name, in hopes that by thus drawing on himself the attention of all his acquaintance, he might establish a farther check upon his passions.* Accordingly, in 1701, he gave it to the world with a dedication to his patron Lord Cutts, † who appointed him his private secretary, and had likewise procured for him a company in Lord Lucas' Fusileers. So gross, however, was the contradiction between the tenor of his work and the general course of his life, that it not only exposed him to painful raillery, but was also attended with more unwelcome consesequences. From being thought no undelightful companion, he was now reckoned a very disagreeable fellow. One or two of his old comrades thought fit to insult him, and try their

* Denham was another instance of an author attempting to write himself out of his follies. But "a man (as Johnson has well observed) who proposes schemes of life in abstraction and disengagement, exempt from the enticements of hope, the solicitations of affection, the importunities of appetite, or the depressions of fear, is in the same state with him that teaches upon land the art of navigation, to whom the sea is always smooth and the wind always prosperous." (Rambler, 14.)

It begins as follows:

• MY LORD,

'Tower Guard, March 23, 1701.

• The address of the following papers is so very much due to your Lordship, that they are but a mere report of what has passed upon guard to my Commander; for they were written upon duty, and when the mind was perfectly disengaged and at leisure, in the silent watch of the night, to run over the busy dream of the day; and the vigilance, which obliges us to suppose an enemy always near us, has awakened a sense that there is a restless and subtile one, which constantly attends our steps and meditates our ruin, &c."

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