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been dispersed by the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge, before the alterations were noticed, Dr. Clarke was charged with a design of imposing upon the Society; whereas, in truth, the edition had been prepared by him exclusively for the use of his own parish. The Bishop of London, however, thought proper to publish A Letter to the Incumbents of all Churches and Chapels in his Diocese, concerning their not using any new Forms of Doxology.* This letter was animadverted upon, in the following year by Mr. Whiston, in an ironical Letter of Thanks to his Lordship; and in a pamphlet, entitled, An humble Apology for St. Paul, and the other Apostles, or, a Vindication of them and their Doxologies from the Charge of Heresy,' by Cornelius Paets.†

About this time he was presented by Mr. Lechmere, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, to the Mastership of Wigstan Hospital in Leicester; a preferment, not requiring subscription.

In 1724, he published Seventeen Sermons on

*The Right Reverend author particularly speaks of "somé persons, seduced by the strong delusions of pride and self-conceit," &c. &c.

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+ Soon afterward came out a second piece of irony, entitled 'A Defence of the Bishop of London, in Answer to Mr. Whiston's Letter of Thanks; addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury. To which is added, A Vindication of Dr. Sachevererell's late Endeavour to turn Mr. Whiston out of his Church.' The same Letter of Thanks occasioned, likewise, the two following pieces; The Lord Bishop of London's Letter to his Clergy vindicated, &c. By a Believer;' and, A Seasonable Review of Mr. Whiston's Account of Primitive Doxologies, &c. By a Presbyter of the Diocese of London' (supposed to be Dr. William Berriman.) To the latter Mr. Whiston replied in a Second Letter to the Bishop of London, &c.' dated March 11, 1719; and was answered by A Second Review, &c.'

several occasions, eleven of which had never before been printed and in 1727, upon the death of Sir Isaac Newton, he declined the offer of the Mastership of the Mint.* To this refusal he was particularly pressed both by Mr. Emlyn and Mr. Whiston, as being what he did not want, entirely remote from the concerns of his profession, and likely materially to obstruct the success of his ministry;' to which the latter added, as his principal reason, that such con duct would show him to be in earnest in religion.? And it is recorded to the honour of Mrs. Clarke, that without urging the advantages which this ap pointment would have produced to her family, she left her husband at full liberty to act as his conscience and inclination should direct him. †

In 1728 appeared, A Letter from Dr. Clarke to Mr Benjamin Hoadly, concerning the Proportion of Velocity and Force in Bodies in Motion.‡

In the beginning of 1729, he published in quarto, the twelve first books of Homer's Iliad, dedicated to the Duke of Cumberland. Homer, we are informed by the Bishop of Winchester, was “Dr. Clarke's admired author, even to a degree of something like enthusiasm hardly natural to his temper; and that in this he went a little beyond the bounds of Horace's judgement, and was so unwilling to

*This was made, in order to secure to his merit that pecuniary reward, which his scruples about subscription and his theological deviations had rendered no longer practicable through the channel of professional advancement.

+ Mr. Whiston, in his particular mention of this affair, states that Mr. Conduit, who succeeded to the office, purchased with 1000l. a place among the King's Writers for one of Dr. Clarke's

sons.

It is printed in the Philosophical Transactions.

allow his favourite ever to nod,' that he has taken remarkable pains to find out and give a reason for every passage, word, and tittle, that could create any suspicion. The translation," adds his Lordship, "with his corrections, may now be stiled accurate; and his notes, as far as they go, are indeed a treasury of grammatical and critical knowledge.”*

On the eleventh of May in this year he was taken suddenly ill, and died on the seventeenth. He had gone out in the morning of the eleventh, to preach before the Judges at Serjeant's Inn; but being subdenly seized with a violent pain in his side, which incapacitated him for the pulpit, he was obliged to be carried home. In the afternoon, however, he thought himself so much better, that he would not suffer himself to be blooded; against which process he entertained strong prejudices. The pain, however, returning about two the next morning, an able physician was called in; who after twice bleeding him, and other applications, thought him out of danger, till the Saturday morning following: when to the surprise and grief of all about him, the pain removed from his side to his head, and after a short complaint took away his senses. Between seven and eight in the evening of that day he expired, aged only fifty four.

He married Katharine, the only daughter of the

*The twelve last books of the Iliad were published in 1732, by his son, Mr. Samuel Clarke; who states, in the preface, that his father had finished the annotations to the first three of those books, and as far as the 359th verse of the fourth; and had revised the text and version as far as verse 510 of the same book.' Upon this performance his fame, as a scholar, principally rests.

Rev. Mr. Lockwood, Rector of Little Massingham in Norfolk, by whom he had seven children: of those two died before, and one a few weeks after him.*

Since his death have been published, from his original manuscripts, by his brother (Dr. John Clarke, Dean of Sarum)+An Exposition on the Church Catechism;' and ten volumes of Sermons. The Exposition contains the lectures which he read on the Thursday mornings, at St. James' church, revised during the latter part of his life with great care, and left completely prepared for the press.

This performance was animadverted upon by Dr. Waterland, his old antagonist, who was answered by Dr. A. A. Sykes; and a series of replies and rejoinders kept the controversy afloat for a considerable time.

"Dr. Clarke (says Bishop Hoadly) was a person of a natural genius, excellent enough to have placed him in the superior rank of men without the acquirements of learning; and of learning enough, to have rendered a much less comprehensive genius very considerable in the ways of the world: but in him they were both united to such a degree, that those who were of his intimate acquaintance knew not which to admire most. The first strokes of knowledge, in some of it's branches, seemed to be little less than natural to him: for they appeared to be right in his mind, as soon as any thing could appear; and to be

* Queen Caroline allowed his widow a pension of one hundred guineas per ann.

+ This gentleman, Chalmers says in a note, was at first apprentice to a weaver in Norwich; but was sent to the University by his brother, and through his interest obtained a stall in his native city, and the deanery abovementioned.

the very same, which afterward grew up with him to perfection, as the strength and cultivation of his mind increased. He had one happiness very rarely known among the greatest men, that his memory was almost equal to his judgement, which is as great a character as can well be given of it." After stating his proficiency in every branch of science and learning, he adds; " "If If in any one of these many branches he had excelled only as much as he did in all, this alone would justly have entitled him to the name of a great man.' But there is something so very extraordinary, that the same person should excel, not only in those parts of knowledge which require the strongest judgement, but in those which want the help of the strongest memory also; and it is so seldom seen that one, who is an eminent master in theology, is at the same time skilfully fond of all critical and classical learning, or excellent in the physical and mathematical studies, or well famed for metaphysical and abstract reasoning; that it ought to be remarked in how particular a manner, and to how high a degree, divinity and mathematics, experimental philosophy and classical learning, metaphysics and critical skill, all of them various and different as they are among themselves, united in Dr. Clarke."* He proceeds to record, how earnestly his friendship was courted

* His character, however, is so much involved in controversy, that it is quite impossible to exhibit more than it's great outlines in these pages. A more minute view of it may be collected from the Biographia Britannica, which contains a professed defence of his principles and conduct, the Lives of him by Whiston and Hoadly, Whitaker's Origin of Arianism,' Warburton's Letters,' Nichols' Bowyer,' and the pamphlets occasionally adverted to above. See also Tytler's Memoirs of Lord Kames,' I. 26.