LETTER LI.

Dr. SIMON PATRICK,* Bishop of Ely, to Dr. TURNER, † President of C. C. C.

Residence.

SIR,

I AM very unwilling to press you into residence beyond your inclinations; but I hoped what I last proposed by Mr. Dean would have been very acceptable to you. Which was, that you would come once in two or three years, when it would be most convenient to you, and the season most inviting. For to be wholly absent, when you are in health, I doubt will not hear well, and both you and I shall be censured as negligent in our duty. Yet I have such a

papers will be found in the Philosophical Transactions, and some of his letters are inserted in Derham's Collection of

Ray's Correspondence. 8vo. Lond. 1718. Besides these, one hundred and twenty copies only of his Lithophylacii Britannici Ichnographia were printed at the expence of Lord Somers, the Earl of Dorset, Sir Isaac Newton, &c. a work of equal rarity and value to mineralogists.

Of Simon Patrick, the celebrated commentator on the Scriptures, an ample account will be found in the Biographia Britannica.

† Dr. Thomas Turner was a younger son of the Dean of Canterbury, born at Bristol, educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he became President, March 13, 1687. He died April 29, 1714.

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respect to you, and am so tender of doing any thing, that will make you uneasy, that I leave you to follow your own prudence and conscience. in this matter. I mention that last word, because I think beneficium and officium cannot be separated. But I look upon you as so good a man, that I may safely leave you to your own judgment, and not interpose mine further in

I RETURN you many thanks for your repeated favours, as well in what relates to my house, wherein I must esteem you my greatest benefactor, as for your kind endeavours to give reputation and value to my small performance about Comets, which no ways deserves a place in your catalogue, or to bear the badge of the Theatre. I purpose to be in Oxford about the you mention, but hope to see you in London

time

summer.

before then. As for Dr. Gregory with whom I this day dined at Sir Is. Newton's, I cannot find that he has any thoughts of seeing Oxford this I see you have put my Apollonius among the books preparing for the press; I wish when done it may answer expectation. If it pleases the Dean and some few Mathematical Judges I have all I hope from it. I could be glad of a few more of my papers, for most of the ten you were pleased to send me, were soiled so as not to be fit to be presented to Quality. Burgers* did not take care to wipe his fingers as he ought.

Your most obedt. servt.

EDM. HALLEY.+

LETTER LIII.

Dr. SMITH to Mr. HEARNE.

Latin Translation of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity.

* Br. Earle's Latin Translation of

Hooker's Books of Ecclesiastical Polity, which was his entertainment during part of his exile at

* The Oxford engraver, he engraved the first and several succeeding University Almanacks.

+ For a very ample account of Halley, see the Biographia Britannica.

Cologne, is utterly destroyed by prodigious heedlessness and carelessness; for it being written in loose papers, only pinned together, and put into a trunk unlocked after his death, and being looked upon as refuse and waste paper, the servants lighted their fire with them, or else put them under their bread and their pies, as often as they had occasion; as the present Earl of Clarendon has more than once told me, who was ordered by my lord his father, about a year after the Bishop's death, to attend upon the widow, at her house near Salisbury, and to receive them from her hands, from whom he received this deplorable account of their loss; himself seeing several scattered pieces, not following in order, the number of pages being greatly interrupted, that had not then undergone the same fate with the rest. This good Bishop* translated the Martyred.

Of this excellent man it is unnecessary to say more than that he was born about the year 1601, educated at Christ Church and Merton Colleges, Oxford, and became chaplain to Lord Pembroke, from whom he obtained the rectory of Bishopstone, Wiltshire. He was appointed chaplain and tutor to Prince Charles, by King James, who was much pleased with him, and this led to his being afterwards Chancellor of the Cathedral of Salisbury. When Charles the Second left England, Dr. Earle tendered his personal and pecuniary assistance to that Monarch, and at the Restoration was rewarded first by the Deanery of Westminster, then by the See of Worcester, and lastly by that of Salisbury. He died at Oxford, Nov. 17, 1665, and was buried in Merton

King's 'Ex into Latin, which was printed in Holland.-*

London, Sept. 13, 1705.

College Chapel. Lord Clarendon gives a very favourable, but a very just character of him. The greater portion of Bishop Earle's Works has lately been introduced to the public, with his MICROCOSMOGRAPHY, 8vo. London, 1811. The following Extract from that instructive and amusing collection of Characters, gives no bad portrait of the venerable author, his practice, and doctrine.

"A grave Divine

"Is one that knows the burthen of his calling, and hath studied to make his shoulders sufficient, for which he hath not been hasty to launch forth of his port, the University, but expected the ballast of learning and the wind of opportunity. Divinity is not the beginning, but the end of his studies: to which he takes the ordinary stair, and makes the arts his way. He counts it not profaneness to be polished with human reading, or to smooth his way by Aristotle to school-divinity. He has sounded both religions, and anchored in the best, and is a protestant out of judgment not faction; not because his country, but his reason is on this side. The ministry is his choice, not refuge, and yet the pulpit not his itch, but fear. His discourse is substance, not all rhetoric, and he utters more things than words. His speech is not helped with inforced action, but the matter acts itself. He shoots all his meditations at one but; and beats upon his text, not the cushion, making his hearers, not the pulpit, groan. In citing of Popish errors, he cuts them with arguments, not cudgels them with barren invectives; and labours more to shew the truth of his cause than the spleen. His sermon is limited by the method not the hourglass; and his devotion goes along with him out of the