PREFACE.

THE republication of the Lives contained in these volumes will, it is hoped, be deemed an acceptable service to those who may not be in possession of the works to which they have been hitherto attached ; or who may be desirous to increase their stores of literary history by having them presented in a form more easily accessible than the original. They are principally valuable as belonging to that species of Biography, called the minute, which we cannot expect to find in Biographical Collections, important as the latter are; and of their importance, no man can be more sensible than the writer of the present article.

It has been often complained that the authors of some lately published lives have be

come

come insufferably prolix by interweaving accounts of other persons who flourished at the same time, and were but remotely connected with the chief object. It is, however, to this very fault, this digressive information, that we owe our knowledge of many men of acknowledged worth in past times; and it is from such apparent redundancies and scattered notices that the compilers of Biographical Collections, acquire some of their most accurate and best authenticated materials. There is reason to think, therefore, that what may seem tedious while the events are fresh in the reader's memory, will be found more interesting to future generations.

Of lives connected with contemporary history, and abounding in literary notices and traits of character no where else to be found, we have some valuable specimens in the English series, which are becoming scarce by neglect, or by the natural lapse of time. It occurred to the present writer,

4

that

that a republication of the most important of these, exactly as left by the respective authors, would not be unacceptable at a time when biography and literary history are more the objects of a laudable curiosity, and when there is a general wish that the benefactors of past times may no longer remain in obscurity.

How far he has made a just estimate of the public inclination in this respect, or how far the contents of these volumes may gratify the curiosity which he supposes to exist, their fate must determine. The undertaking was first suggested by a perusal of the very interesting life of DR. POCOCK; and the lives which accompany it were selected as containing, with respect to more modern times, an equally considerable portion of curious history, ecclesiastical, political and literary.

To the whole is added the very necessary appendage of a nominal Index.

Nov. 1816,

A. C.

THE

LIFE

OF THE

REV. AND MOST LEARNED

DR. EDWARD POCOCK.

SECTION I.

DR. POCOCK was born on the eighth day of November, in the year of our Lord 1604. He was the son of Mr. Edward Pocock, bachelor of divinity, some time fellow of St. Mary Magdalen college in Oxford, but then vicar of Chievely in Berks. It happened that the place of his birth was that, wherein he was to spend the greatest part of his life. For his father having been lately presented to the vicarage before-mentioned, could not yet order his affairs to settle upon it, but was forced, it seems, for some time, to leave his family in Oxford; and there, within the parish of St. Peter's in the West, this his eldest son Edward was born.

VOL. I.

B

His