ROWE, (ELIZABETH,) the daughter of the Reverend Mr. Singer, a dissenting minister, was born at Ilchester, in Somersetshire, on the 11th of September, 1674. Music, painting, and poetry, she cultivated at an early age; and, in 1696, she published a volume of poems, winch gained her some reputation, having previously composed a paraphrase on the thirty-eighth chapter of Job, at the request of Bishop Ken. She afterwards studied French and Italian, under the superintendence of the Honourable Mr. Thynne, son to Lord Weymouth, who was much captivated with her person and abilities. which induced, among others, the poet Prior, to pay his addresses to her. She, however, in 1710, gave her hand to Mr. Thomas Rowe, but becoming a widow in 1715, retired to Frome, in Somersetshire, where she composed the most celebrated of her works, Friendship in Death, or Twenty Letters from the Dead to the Living. This was sueceeded, in 1729, by Letters, Moral and Entertaining, in Verse and Prose; and, in 1736, by her History of Joseph a poem; and, in the February of the following year, she died of apoplexy. Shortly after her death, Dr. Isaac Watts published her Devout Exercises of the Heart, with a preface, in which he highly commends them, for the sublime sentiments and elevated piety which they contain. In 1739, appeared her Miscellaneous Works, in Prose and Verse, in two volumes, octavo, with an account of her life and writings prefixed. The poetry of Mrs. Rowe is of a serious cast, and displays feeling, imagination, and taste; but, upon the whole, it is not deserving of a higher epithet than respectable. Her character was exceedingly estimable, and she enjoyed the friendship of some of the most eminent literati of her day.

RUDDIMAN, (THOMAS,) was born at Raggel, in Banffshire, in October, 1674, and received his education at the parish school of his native place. On leaving this, he wished to try for a bursary at Aberdeen, but his father being opposed to this step, young Ruddiman lett home privately with only a guinea in his pocket, for the purpose of proceeding to the above-named city. Though robbed, on his way, of his

money, coat, stockings, and shoes, he contrived to reach Aberdeen; and, without friends, and almost without clothes, obtained the object of his ambition. After five years' study at the university, he graduated M.A., in 1694; and, in 1700, lett Laurencekirk, where he had been master of the parish school, for Edinburgh. In 1702, he was appointed assistant librarian to the faculty of advocates, but derived so small an income from his literary undertakings, that, in 1707, he commenced business as an auctioneer. At length his circumstances were bettered, by an increase of salary, which induced him to decline accepting the rectorship of the grammar-school of Dundee, on its being offered to him, and enabled him to continue his literary labours without interruption. In 1729, he became joint proprietor, with his brother, of The Čaledonian Mercury newspaper; resigned his situation of librarian in 1752, and died on the 19th of January, 1757. The works, by which he is chiefly known, are, his Grammatical Exercises, still used in teaching Latin in Scotland, and his Rudiments of the Latin Tongue, which has superseded all other books of the kind in the country of the author, and was even taught in England. His other publications are Buchanani Opera Omnia, Critical Observations on Burman's Commentary on Lucan's Pharsalia, a continuation of Anderson's Diplomata et Numismata Scotiæ, John stoni Cantici, an edition of Voluseni de Animi Tranquillitate Dialogus, and also of Bishop Gawin Douglas's Translation of the Eneid, for which he wrote the glossary.

TANNER, (THOMAS, Bishop of St. Asaph,) was born in 1674, at Market Lavington, in Wiltshire, of which place his father was vicar. He completed his education at Oxford, where, in 1707, he accumulated the degrees of B. D. and D.D., having previously been made chaplain to the Bishop of Norwich, and chancellor of his diocese. In 1713, he was made prebend of Ely; in 1723, a canon of Christchurch, Oxford; in 1727, prolocutor of the lower house of convocation and, in 1732, he was raised to the see of St. Asaph, in the possession of which he died, at Christchurch, Oxford, on the 13th of December, 1735.

He published Notitia Monastica, and a second edition of Wood's Athenæ, Oxoniensis; and, in 1748, appeared his celebrated posthumous work, Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica, the fruit, it is said, of forty years' study. It contains alphabetical memoirs of the principal English, Irish and Scotch writers, down to the commencement of the seventeenth century, and displays great learning, research, and industry.

HUGHES, (JOHN,) was born at Marlborough, in Wiltshire, on the 29th of January, 1677. He received his education in London, at a dissenting academy, under Dr. Thomas Rowe, and he early displayed a taste for literature, and the fine arts. At nineteen, he paraphrased, in verse, one of the most difficult odes of Horace; but his cultivation of the muse did not hinder him from pursuing his business at the ordnance office, where he held a situation, as well as being secretary to several commissions under the great seal, for the purchase of lands for the dockyards of Portsmouth, Chatham, and Harwich. Devoting, however, all his leisure to the belles lettres, he soon made himself acquainted with the modern languages, and, in 1697, he published a poem on the treaty of Ryswick, which is said to have met with an approbation rarely bestowed on, and very rarely deserved by, a young poet of twenty. He added to his reputation in 1699, by the publication of his Court of Neptune, on the return of King William from Holland; and, in 1701, he wrote a piece, entitled Of the Pleasure of being Deceived; the first of those essays from his pen, which have been since considered among the most entertaining and able in our language. In 1702, he published, on the death of King William, a Pindaric ode, entitled Of the House of Nassau; and, in 1703, his Ode in Praise of Music was performed at Stationer's Hall, with great applause. In 1706, he wrote a most masterly preface to Kennet's History of England, and afterwards translated Fontenelle's Dialogues of the Dead, in three parts, in which he completely caught the spirit of the original. 1712, he translated the Abbé Vertot's Revolutions in Portugal; and, shortly afterwards, published An Cde to the

In

Creator of the World, composed from the fragments of Orpheus, to which the biographer of Hughes, in the Biographia Britannica, has, erroneously, applied the concluding part of Addison's criticism on Milton, in Number Three Hundred and Thirty-Nine of The Spectator, which has evident reference to Blackmore's Poem on the Creation. In 1715, he published an accurate edition of the works of Spenser, which Pope highly commended; and, in 1717, in which year he was appointed, by Earl Cowper, secretary to the commissioners of the peace, appeared a singular piece from his pen, entitled Charon, or the Ferry-Boat, a vision. He died on the 17th of February, 1719-20, the very day on which his celebrated tragedy, The Siege of Damascus, was represented for the first time. Swift ranks Hughes among the mediocrists in prose as well as verse, to which Pope assents, observing, that "what he wanted in genius, he made up as an honest man." In 1735, a complete collection of his poems and dramatic pieces was published, in two volumes, duodecimo, by his brother-in-law, Mr. Duncombe.

posthumous volume was printed at Dublin, in 1758; but are so interior to the former that they may be doubted to have been from the same pen. His best and most popular performances are, The Hermit, The Allegory on Man, and A Night Piece on Death; they are characterised, as are most of his poems, by easiness and sweetness of diction, sprightliness without effort, and propriety without pains. Johnson has justly observed of them, that it is impossible to say whether they are the productions of nature so excellent as not to want the help of art, or of art so refined as to resemble nature.

EUSDEN, (LAWRENCE,) was born at Spotsworth, in Yorkshire, about the year 1680, and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied divinity. After entering into holy orders, he became chaplain to Lord Willoughby de Broke; was appointed poet laureate in 1718; and, subsequently, rector of Coningsby, in Lincolnshire, where he died, on the 27th of September, 1730. His poems, which are in several collections, consist of miscellaneous pieces, written on particular occasions, and which procured him the patronage of the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Halifax, whose poem of The Battle of the Boyne he translated into Latin verse. He also left behind, in manuscript, a translation of the works of Tasso, with a life of that poet; and is said, but upon doubtful authority, to have contributed to The Spectator and Guardian. Eusden excited much jealousy by obtaining the laureateship; and was satirized, by Pope, in The Dunciad; by Oldmixon, in his Art of Logic and by Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, in his Session of the Poets, where he is thus mentioned,

In rush'd Eusden, and cry'd Who shall have it
But I, the true laureate, to whom the King gave it?
Apollo begg'd pardon, and granted his claim,
But vow'd that, till then, be ue'er heard of his

name.

SEWEL, (GEORGE,) was born at Windsor, where his father held the office of treasurer and chapter clerk, about the year 1680. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge, where, being intended for the medical profession, he graduated B. M.; and, after having

studied, under Boerhaave, at Leyden, returned to London, and practised as a physician. In the latter part of his life, he removed to Hampstead, where he died, on the 8th of February, 1726, leaving behind the reputation of an ingenious writer, both in poetry and prose, which he had acquired by the publication of several works, from 1719 up to the time of his death. Of these may be mentioned his tragedy of Sir Walter Raleigh, and Epistles to Mr. Addison on the Death of Lord Halifax; and, among his prose works, A Life of John Philips; A Vindication of the English Stage; and Schism Destructive of the Government both in Church and State. He was also a contributor to the fifth volume of The Tatler, and the ninth of The Spectator; translated Mr. Addison's Latin poems, and portions of Ovid, Lucan, and Tibullus; and wrote a variety of political pamphlets, principally directed against the Bishop of Salisbury.

BROOME, (WILLIAM,) was born at Cheshire, about the year 1680, and educated upon the foundation of Eton; whence he was sent to St. John's College, Cambridge, where he studied for the church, and went by the name of the Poet, in consequence of his addiction to verse. He acquired great reputation by the part he took, with Ozell and Oldisworth, in translating the Iliad into prose; and being introduced to Pope, he was employed by him to assist him in his own version both of the Iliad and the Odyssey. In the former, he was only concerned with reference to the notes from Eustathius; but of the latter he wrote the second, sixth, eighth, eleventh, twelfth, sixteenth, eighteenth, and twenty-third books, together with all the notes. For this performance he only received £500, and probably complained to Pope of the smallness of the sum, who, in consequence, inserted his name in The Dunciad. Broome became D. D. in 1728, and was, in the same year, presented to the rectory of Pulham, in Norfolk. This he resigned on being appointed vicar of Eye, which he held with Oakley Magna, in Suffolk, both given him by Lord Cornwallis, to whom he was chaplain. He died, at Bath, on the 16th of November, 1745, and was buried in the abbey church.