popular classics of our language, and which will do most to retain him in that station. Without this, even his humour and his imagination would not perhaps have saved him from neglect for no writer, it is worthy of remark, has ever attained an enduring fame in literature, whose style was none of his chief recommendations.

John Flamsteed.

BORN A. D. 1646.-died a. D. 1719.

JOHN FLAMSTEED, the celebrated astronomer and mathematician, was the son of Stephen Flamsteed, a substantial yeoman of Derby, where he was born in the year 1646. He was educated at the freeschool of Derby. But at fourteen years of age, and while head-scholar, he was afflicted with a severe fit of sickness, which, being followed by other distempers, prevented his going to the university, as had been originally intended.

He was taken from school in the year 1662, and, within a month or two after, had John de Sacrobosco's book' De Sphærâ' lent him, which he set himself to read without any instruction. This accident, and the leisure which he now had, laid the ground-work of all that accurate mathematical and astronomical knowledge for which he became afterwards so celebrated. He had already read a great deal of history, ecclesiastical as well as civil, but this subject was entirely new to him, and he was greatly delighted with it. Having translated a portion of Sacrobosco's treatise, he proceeded to make dials by the direction of such books as he could procure; and having changed a piece of astrology, found among his father's books, for Street's Caroline Tables,' he learned the method of computing eclipses, and set himself to calculate the places of the planets. He spent some part of his time, however, in astrological studies; yet he never was captivated with the solemn pretensions of that vain science.

Having calculated by the Caroline Tables' an eclipse of the sun, which was to happen on the 22d of June, 1666, he communicated it to a relation, who showed it to Mr Hatton of Wingfield-manor in Derbyshire. This gentleman-who was a good mathematician, as appears from some of his pieces published in the appendix to Foster's Mathematical Miscellanies'-came to see Mr Flamsteed soon after; and finding he was little acquainted with the astronomical performances of others, sent him Riccioli's Novum Almagestum,' and Kepler's Rudolphine Tables,' with some other mathematical books to which he was before a stranger; and from this time he prosecuted his studies with great vigour and success.

In 1669, he calculated some remarkable appulses of the moon to the fixed stars, by the Caroline Tables;' and directed them to Lord Brouncker, then president of the Royal society. This communication was so much approved, that it procured him letters of thanks from Mr Oldenburg, the secretary, and from Mr John Collins, one of the members. In June 1690, his father-who had hitherto discounte nanced his studies-taking notice of his correspondence with several ingenious men whom he had never seen, advised him to make a journey

to London that he might be personally acquainted with them. Young Flamsteed gladly embraced this proposal, and visited Mr Oldenburg and Mr Collins, who introduced him to Sir Jonas Moore, one of the most eminent mathematicians of the day. Sir Jonas took Mr Flamsteed under his protection, presented him with Townley's micrometer, and undertook to procure him glasses for a telescope at a moderate rate. Flamsteed soon after went to Cambridge, where he visited Barrow, Rae, and Newton; and at the same time entered himself a student of Jesus-college. Sir Jonas Moore contributed to his

expenses.

In the spring of the year 1672, he extracted some observations from Gascoigne's and Crabtree's Letters on Mathematical Subjects,' which had not been made public, and which he translated into Latin. He finished the transcript of Mr Gascoigne's papers in May; and spent the remainder of the year in making observations, and in preparing calculations of the approaches of the moon and planets to the fixed stars for the following year. These were published by Oldenburg in the Philosophical transactions with some observations on the planets which Mr Flamsteed imparted to him. In 1673, he wrote a small tract on the true and apparent diameters of all the planets when at their greatest and least distances from the earth. In 1674, he wrote an Ephemeris, in which he exposed the falsity of astrology, and the ignorance of those that pretended to skill in this pseudo-science, and gave a table of the moon's rising and setting, together with the eclipses and approaches of the moon and planets to the fixed stars. This was communicated to Sir Jonas Moore, for whom Mr Flamsteed made a table of the moon's true southing that year.

Flamsteed having taken the degree of master of arts at Cambridge, resolved to enter into holy orders, and to settle at a small living near Derby, which was in the gift of a friend of his father's. In the meantime, Sir Jonas Moore having notice of his design, wrote to him to come to London, whither he returned in February, 1675. He was entertained in the house of that gentleman, who had other views for him; but Mr Flamsteed persisting in his resolution to take orders, he did not dissuade him from it. On the 4th of March following, Sir Jonas brought Mr Flamsteed a warrant to be the king's astronomer, with a salary of £100 per annum. This, however, did not induce him to relinquish his design of entering into holy orders, and on Easter following he was ordained at Ely-house by Bishop Gunning.

On the 10th of August, 1675, the foundation of the royal observatory at Greenwich was laid; and as Mr Flamsteed was the first astronomerroyal for whose use this edifice was erected, it still bears the name of Flamsteed-house. During the building of it, he lodged at Greenwich ; and his quadrant and telescopes being kept in the queen's house there, he observed the appulses of the moon and planets to the fixed stars. In 1681 his Doctrine of the Sphere' was published in Sir Jonas Moore's System of the Mathematics.' About the year 1684 he was presented to the living of Burslow, near Bleachingly, in Surrey. Of the manner in which Mr Flamsteed obtained this living, the following account is given by Roger North. "Sir Jonas Moore once invited the lord-keeper North to dine with him at the Tower; and after dinner presented Mr Flamsteed. His lordship received him with much

familiarity, and encouraged him to come and see him often, that he might have the pleasure of his conversation. The star-gazer was not wanting to himself in that; and his lordship was extremely delighted with his accounts and observations about the planets, especially those attendant on Jupiter, showing how the eclipses of them, being regular and calculable, might rectify the longitude of places upon the globe, and demonstrating that light did not pass instantaneously, but in time; with other remarkables in the heavens. These discourses always regaled

his lordship; and a good benefice falling void, not far from the observatory, in the gift of the great seal, his lordship gave it to Mr Flamsteed; which set him at ease in his fortunes, and encouraged his future labours, from which great things were expected; as applying the Jovial observations to marine uses, for finding longitudes at sea, and to correct the globes, celestial and terrestial, which were very faulty. And in order to the first, he had composed tables of the eclipses of the satellites, which showed when they were to happen, one after another ; and of these, finely painted upon a neat board, he made a present to his lordship. And he had advanced his other design of rectifying maps, by having provided large blank globes, on which he might inscribe his places corrected. But plenty and pains seldom dwell together; for as one enters the other gives way; and, in this instance, a good living, pensions, &c. spoiled a good cosmographer and astronomer; so very little is left of Mr Flamsteed's sedulous and judicious applicacations that way."

In justice to Mr Flamsteed, it should be observed, that there appears no ground for North's reflection at the close of the above passage. His astronomical inquiries might not produce all the consequences which he sometimes expected from them; but nothing of this kind seems to have arisen from any want of application in him; for the Philosophical transactions afford ample evidence of his activity and diligence, as well as of his penetration and exactness in astronomical studies, after he had obtained the preferments that have been already mentioned, and which were all that ever were conferred upon him.

In December, 1719, Mr Flamsteed was seized with strangury, which carried him off on the last day of that month. He spent a great part of his life in the pursuit of knowledge, and his uncommon merit as an astronomer was acknowledged by the ablest of his contemporaries; particularly by Dr John Wallis, Dr Edmund Halley, and Sir Isaac Newton. Amongst his foreign correspondents was the celebrated Cassini.

His Historia Coelestis Britannica' was published at London, in 1725, in three volumes folio, and dedicated to the king by his widow. Great part of this work had been printed off before his death, and the rest completed, except the prolegomena prefixed to the third volume. The clebrated mathematician, Dr John Keill, observes, "that Mr Flamsteed, with indefatigable pains, for more than forty years watched the motions of the stars, and gave us innumerable observations of the sun, moon, and planets, which he made with very large instruments exactly divided by most exquisite art, and fitted with telescopical sights. Whence we are to rely more upon the observations he hath made, than on those that went before him, who had made their observations with the naked eye, without the assistance of telescopes."

PERIOD.]

NICHOLAS ROWE.

John Hughes.

BORN A. D. 1677.-died A. D. 1719.

THIS ingenious writer was educated at the same academy with Isaac Watts and Samuel Say. On the peace of Ryswick, he presented himself to public notice by publishing a poem in celebration of that event; he subsequently commemorated the leading public events in a series of odes, most of which owed their fame with the public to the exquisite music which was composed for them by such masters of the art as Purcell, Pepusch, and Handel. His dramatic piece, entitled 'The Siege of Damascus,' is his best known work. He also published a very spirited translation of the tenth book of Lucan. Addison appears to have entertained a very high idea of Hughes's poetical powers, for he at one time wished him to write the fifth act of Cato.' He was an extensive contributor to the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian.

Nicholas Rowe.

BORN A. D. 1673.-Died A. D. 1719.

NICHOLAS ROWE, the son of John Rowe, Esq. sergeant at law, was born at Little Berkford, in Bedfordshire, in 1673. He obtained the prior part of his education at a private school in Highgate, and was afterwards removed to Westminster, where, under the care of the celebrated Dr Busby, he made a rapid progress in the acquisition of the learned languages, and at the age of fifteen was elected one of the king's scholars.

His father, who had destined him to the study of the law, thought him qualified, when sixteen, for a student of the Middle Temple; and for some years he prosecuted the initiatory studies of his profession with so much zeal and ability, as to promise the attainment of considerable The death of his father, however, which took eminence as a barrister. place when he had reached his nineteenth year, relaxed his efforts; and a partiality for elegant literature, and especially for poetry, which he had early imbibed with enthusiasm during his residence at Westminster, began to share, and at length to occupy the whole of his time.

The fruit of this change in the direction of his pursuits, was, at the age of twenty-five, the production of a tragedy, under the title of 'The Ambitious Step-Mother,' and which being received with very general He relinapplause, fixed him for ever in the service of the Muses. quished, therefore, entirely any further attention to his profession; and we are to view him, for some years, as almost exclusively occupied in writing for the stage.

We shall therefore proceed to notice briefly his dramatic pieces without interruption from intervening events; they form the prominent feature of his life and character, and upon them his reputation with posIn 1702, four years after the terity is, in a great measure, built. appearance of his first play, he brought forward a second tragedy,

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named Tamerlane;' and which, from its allusion to personages then acting an important part on the political stage, met with more applause than it intrinsically merited. When it was known that Tamerlane was drawn for King William, and Bajazet for Lewis the Fourteenth, nothing at that time was wanting to render it a favourite with the public. To this popular production succeeded, in 1703, the tragedy of the 'Fair Penitent,' which, from the beauty and melody of the versification, the sweetness of the diction, and the interesting conduct of the fable, still continues to attract, with power equal to what it first possessed, the lovers and admirers of the drama. It has had the merit, likewise, of furnishing to Richardson the bases on which he has constructed the highly-finished character of Lovelace.

The next two tragedies of Rowe; the Ulysses' acted in 1706, and the Royal Convert' in 1708, met with a very cold reception on the stage, and are now no longer remembered. The poet, however, made ample atonement for these failures by the composition of his 'Jane Shore,' the best and most pathetic of his plays, and which, together with his Fair Penitent,' will remain a durable monument of his genius. The last dramatic effort of our author was Lady Jane Grey,' greatly inferior in every respect to its immediate predecessor, and which seems to have excited little attention, either on its first appearance, or since.

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Rowe, as a dramatic poet, has not attained the highest excellencies of his art; he is not distinguished for his powers of exciting either pity or terror, nor are his characters boldly or accurately discriminated; in these respects, which form the essential virtues of the tragic bard, he is not only inferior to Shakspeare, with whom competition may be pronounced nearly hopeless, but to Fletcher, to Massinger, and to Otway. The qualities which have enabled Rowe to maintain his station on the stage are, the dignity and melody of his verse; the amatory softness which breathes through many of his scenes; the beauty of his sentiments, and the interesting construction of his fables.

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Not content with the cypress wreath of Melpomene, our poet ventured, in 1706, to court the Muse of Comedy, and brought forward at the theatre at Lincoln's-inn-fields a piece of this description, in three acts, called The Biter.' It was, however, so completely deficient in the vis comica, that, though it is recorded of its author that he sat laughing almost convulsively in the house at what he deemed incomparable strokes of wit, the audience unanimously, and very seriously and indignantly, condemned it to perpetual oblivion.

Two works which employed much of Mr Rowe's time and attention remain to be noticed. The first is an edition of Shakspeare's plays, which he published in 1709, with a short life of Shakspeare prefixed. He appears not to have been well qualified for this task; "Rowe," says Mr Capell, "went no further than to the edition nearest to him in time, which was the folio of 1685, the last and worst of these impressions : this he republished with great exactness; correcting here and there some of its grossest mistakes, and dividing into acts and scenes the plays that were not divided before. The second is a version of Lucan's Pharsalia, in the rhymed couplet of ten syllables, which, though finished before, was not published until ten years after his death. This is a very successful attempt, and exhibits the spirit and genius of the Roman bard with great energy and fidelity. The versification, if not