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knowledgment for the favour he had done me, in communicating it to me. He asked me how I liked it, and what I thought of it, which I modestly but freely told him; and after some further discourse about it, I pleasantly said to him, Thou hast said much here of Paradise Lost, but what hast thou to say of Paradise Found?' He made me no answer, but sat some time in a muse, then brake off that discourse, and fell upon another subject.

After the sickness was over, and the city well cleansed, and become safely habitable again, he returned thither; and when, afterward. I went to wait on him there (which I seldom failed of doing whenever my occasions drew me to London), he showed me his second poem, called 'Paradise Regained,' and in a pleasant tone, said to me, 'This is owing to you, for you put it into my head at Chalfont, which be fore I had not thought of.'

Brief notices of Aubrey, Wood, Rymer, Flavel, and Ray, will close our present remarks.

JOHN AUBREY was descended from an ancient family in Wiltshire, and born at Easton-Piers, on the third of November, 1626. He received the rudiments of his education at Malmsbury grammar-school, and, in 1642, entered Trinity College, Oxford, where he pursued his studies with great diligence and attention, till 1646, when he entered the Middle Temple, London, as a student of law. On the death of his father, which happened soon after he commenced his legal studies, he relinquished the law, and assumed the charge of a number of estates to which he succeeded; all of which, however, were so much embarrassed as to involve him in a succession of law-suits which only ended in his ruin. During the whole of this period he maintained his connection with his learned friends at the university, and unremittingly prosecuted his antiquarian researches. The latter part of his life he passed as the guest of Lady Long, at her seat in Wiltshire, near Dragcot. His death occurred while on his way from Dragcot to Oxford, in 1700.

Aubrey was a man of excellent capacity, profound learning, and indefatigable application. Though an extensive writer, his only published work is a collection of popular superstitions relative to dreams, portents, ghosts, and witchcraft, under the title of Miscellanies. His manuscripts, of which many are preserved in the Ashmolean Museum, and the library of the Royal Society, prove his researches to have been very extensive, and have furnished much useful information to later antiquaries. Aubrey's principal fault, as an antiquarian, was the want of power to discriminate the false from the true; yet he by no means deserves the severe censures that have often been heaped upon him. Three volumes, published in 1813, under the title of Letters written by Eminent Persons in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, with Lives of Eminent Men, are occupied principally by very curious literary anecdotes, all of which Aubrey communicated to Anthony Wood. From this interesting author we can not make any appropriate selection.

ANTHONY WOOD, the friend and frequent associate of Aubrey, was born in the city of Oxford, on the seventeenth of December, 1632. He received his early education at New-College school, and at Thame-school, in his native city; and in 1647 entered Merton College, whence he was graduated with the degree of master of arts, in 1655. From this time Wood's life was exclusively devoted to antiquities, and the earliest fruit of his labors was the Historia et Antiquitates Universitatis Oxoniensis. The manuscript of this work being shown to Dr. Fell, bishop of Oxford, the learned prelate was so much pleased with it that he prevailed upon the author to publish it in the Latin language. The bishop, into whose hands it was placed for the purpose of being rendered into Latin, committed the task of translating it to a student of the university by the name of Peers, by whom it was prepared for publication, and appeared in two volumes folio, in 1674. Wood also published, in 1691, a well-known work entitled Athena Oxonienses, being an account of the lives and writings of almost all the eminent authors educated at Oxford, and many of those who were educated at Cambridge. This book has been of much utility to the compilers of biographical works, though the composition is inelegant, and the statements not always well authenticated. The author was doubtless a respecter of truth, but was frequently misled by narrow-minded prejudices and hastily-formed opinions. Wood's death occurred at Oxford, on the twenty-ninth of November, 1695. His style is so poor that we shall not offer any illustrative extract of his writings.

THOMAS RYMER, another distinguished antiquarian of this period, was a native of Yorkshire, but the period of his birth has not been preserved. He was educated at Cambridge, and afterwards entered Gray's Inn as a student of law; but he seems never to have followed the legal profession. Having been appointed, in 1692, royal historiographer, he availed himself of the opportunities of research which his office afforded him, and, in 1704, began to publish a collection of public treaties and compacts, under the title of Fœdera Conventiones, et cujuscunque generis Acta Publica inter Reges Angliæ et alios Principes, ab anno 1101. Of this work Rymer published fifteen volumes folio, being assisted in his labors by Robert Sanderson, another industrious antiquarian, by whom five more were added after Rymer's death, which occurred in 1715.

The Foedera,' though immethodical and ill-digested, is a highly valuable publication, and, indeed, is indispensable to those who desire to be accurately acquainted with the history of England. Besides this great work Rymer left fifty-eight manuscript volumes containing a great variety of historical materials, and still preserved in the British museum. He also wrote a tragedy entitled Edgar, and a Critical View of the Tragedies of the Last Age, neither of which, however, possesses any comparative merit.

JOHN FLAVEL, a zealous nonconformist divine, was born at WorcesterVOL. II.-M

shire, in 1627, and educated at University College, Oxford. He early settled at Dartmouth, and during the times of religious persecution was greatly molested. His private character was irreproachable, and in the pulpit he was distinguished for the warmth, fluency, and variety of his devotional exercises, which, like his writings, were somewhat tinged with enthusiasm. His works, occupying two folio volumes, are written in a plain and perspicuous style, and some of them are still highly valued by Calvinistic Christians. This remark applies more particularly to his Husbandry Spiritualized and Navigation Spiritualized, in which the author extracts a variety of pious lessons from natural objects and phenomena, and the common operations of life. Many of his sermons also have been published, and, in their day, were extremely popular.

JOHN RAY, an eminent naturalist, and the son of a blacksmith, was born at Black-Notley, in Essex, on the twenty-ninth of November, 1628. He was prepared for college at Braintree school, and, in 1644, entered Catherine Hall, Cambridge. Before the second year of his collegiate life had, however, passed, he left that college and entered Trinity, where he remained to take his master's degree, and to be chosen to a fellowship. Ray early entered the ministry, but the passing of the act of uniformity, in 1662, put an end to his prospects in the church; for in that year he was deprived of his fellowship of Trinity College, on account of his conscientious refusal to comply with the injunction, that all ecclesiastical persons should make a declaration of the nullity and illegality of the solemn league and covenant. He now turned his attention to natural history, particularly to botany; and his works on that subject, which are more numerous than those of any other botanist except Linnæus, have such merit as to entitle him to be ranked as one of the great founders of the science.

In 1663, Ray, in company with a friend, visited several continental countries, previously to which he had travelled through England and Scotland; and the results of his studies and travels were soon after given to the public, as, Observations, Topographical, Moral and Physiological, made in a Journey through part of the Low Countries, Germany, Italy, and France, and A General History of Plants. The latter, consisting of two large folio volumes, is a work of prodigious labor, and aims at describing and reducing to the author's system, all the plants that had been discovered throughout the world. As a cultivator of zoology and entomology also, Ray deserves to be mentioned with particular honor. For the greater part of his popular fame, however, he is indebted to an admirable treatise, published in 1691, entitled The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation. One of his reasons for composing this work is thus stated by himself:-By vir tue of my functions, I suspect myself to be obliged to write something in divinity, having written so much on other subjects; for being not permitted to serve the church with my tongue in preaching, I know not but it may be my duty to serve it with my hand in writing; and I have made choice of

this subject, as thinking myself best qualified to treat of it.' Upon natural theology, Wilkins, Henry More, Cudworth, and other able writers in England had previously written; but Ray was the first to systematize and popularize the subject. He displays, throughout his treatise, much philosophical caution with respect to the admission of facts in natural history, and good sense in the reflections, in which he is led, by his subject, to indulge.

Besides the important works that we have already mentioned, Ray published, in 1672, a Collection of English Proverbs; and, in 1700, A Persua sive to a Holy Life. The latter possesses the same rational and solid charac ter which distinguishes his scientific and theological works. This learned and excellent man died on the seventeenth of January, 1705; and on his death-bed he wrote the following affecting letter to Sir Hans Sloane :—

Dear Sir-The best of friends. These are to take a final leave of you as to this world: I look upon myself as a dying man. God requite your kindness expressed any ways towards me a hundred-fold; bless you with a confluence of all good things in this world, and eternal life and happiness hereafter; grant us a happy meeting in heaven. I am Sir, eternally yours,

JOHN RAY.

The following extract is taken from the treatise on 'The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation.'

GOD'S EXHORTATION TO ACTIVITY.

Methinks by all this provision for the use and service of man, the Almighty interpretatively speaks to him in this manner: 'I have now placed thee in a spacious and well-furnished world; I have endued thee with an ability of understanding what is beautiful and proportionable, and have made that which is so agreeable and delightful to thee; I have provided thee with materials whereon to exercise and employ thy art and strength; I have given thee an excellent instrument, the hand, accommodated to make use of them all; I have distinguished the earth into hills and valleys, and plains, and meadows, and woods; all these parts capable of culture and improvement by thy industry; I have committed to thee for thy assistance in the labours of ploughing, and carrying, and drawing, and travel, the laborious ox, the patient ass, and the strong and serviceable horse; I have created a multitude of seeds for thee to make choice out of them, of what is most pleasant to thy taste, and of most wholesome and plentiful nourishment; I have also made great variety of trees, bearing fruit both for food and physic, those, too, capable of being meliorated and improved by transplantation, stercoration, incision, pruning, watering, and other arts and devices. Till and manure thy fields, sow them with thy seeds, extirpate noxious and unprofitable herbs, guard them from the invasion and spoil of beasts, clear and fence in thy meadows, and pastures, dress and prune thy vines, and so rank and dispose them as is most suitable to the climate; plant thee orchards, with all sorts of fruit-trees, in such order as may be most beautiful to the eye, and most comprehensive of plants; gardens for culinary herbs, and all kinds of salleding; for delectable flowers; to gratify the eye with their agreeable colours and figures, and thy scent with their fragrant odours; for odoriferous and ever-green shrubs and suffrutices; for exotic and medicinal plants of all sorts; and dispose them in that comely order as may be most pleasant to behold, and commodious for access. I have furnished thee with all materials for building, as stone, and timber, and slate, and lime, and clay, and earth, whereof to make bricks and tiles. Deck and bespangle the country with

houses and villages convenient for thy habitation, provided with out-houses and stables for the harbouring and sheltering of thy cattle, with barns and granaries for the reception and custody, and storing up thy corn and fruits. I have made thee a sociable creature, zoon politikon, for the improvement of thy understanding by conference, and communication of observations and experiment: for mutual help, assistance, and defence, build thee large towns and cities with straight and well-paved streets, and elegant rows of houses, adorned with magnificent temples for my honour and worship, with beautiful palaces for thy princes and grandees, with stately halls for public meetings of the citizens and their several companies, and the sessions of the courts of judicature, besides public porticos and aqueducts. I have implanted in thy nature a desire for seeing strange and foreign, and finding out unknown countries, for the improvement and advance of thy knowledge in geography, by observing the bays, and creeks, and havens, and promontories, the outlets of rivers, the situation of the maritime towns and cities, the longitude and latitude, &c., of those places; in politics, by noting their government, their manners, laws, and customs, their diet and medicine, their trades and manufactures, their houses and buildings, their exercises and sports, &c. In physiology, or natural history, by searching out their natural rarities, the productions, both of land and water, what species of animals, plants, and minerals, of fruit and drugs, are to be found there, what commodities for bartering and permutation whereby thou mayest be enabled to make large additions to natural history, to advance those other sciences, and to benefit and enrich thy country by increase of its trade and merchandise. I have given thee timber and iron to build the hulls of ships, tall trees for masts, flax and hemp for sails, cables and cordage for rigging. I have armed thee with courage and hardiness to attempt the seas, and traverse the spacious plains of that liquid element; I have assisted thee with a compass, to direct thy course when thou shalt be out of all ken of land, and have nothing in view but the sky and water. Go thither for the purpose before-mentioned, and bring home what may be useful and beneficial to thy country in general, or to thyself in particular.'

I persuade myself, that the bountiful and gracious author of man's being and faculties, and all things else, delights in the beauty of his creation, and is well pleased with the industry of man, in adorning the earth, with beautiful cities and castles, with pleasant villages and country-houses, with regular gardens, and orchards, and plantations of all sorts of shrubs and herbs, and fruit, for meat, medicine, or moderate delights; with shady woods and groves, and walks set with rows of elegant trees; with pastures clothed with flocks, and valleys covered over with corn, and meadows burthened with grass, and whatever else differenceth a civil and well-cultivated region from barren and desolate wilderness.

If a country thus planted and adorned, thus polished and civilized, thus improved to the height by all manner of culture for the support and sustenance, and convenient entertainment of innumerable multitudes of people, be not to be preferred before a barbarous and inhospitable Scythia, without houses, without plantations, without cornfields or vineyards, where the roving hordes of the savage and truculent inhabitants transfer themselves from place to place in wagons, as they can find pasture and forage for their cattle, and live upon milk, and flesh roasted in the sun, at the pommels of their saddles; or a rude and unpolished America, peopled with slothful and naked Indians-instead of well-built houses, living in pitiful huts and cabins, made of poles set endways; then surely the brute beast's condition and manner of living, to which what we have mentioned doth nearly approach, is to be esteemed better thau man's, and wit and reason was in vain bestowed on him.

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