BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY; CONTAINING (An Hiftorical and Critical) Account OF THЕ LIVES and WRITINGS OF THE Most Eminent Persons In every NATION; Particularly the BRITISH and IRISH; From the Earliest Accounts of Time to the present Period. WHEREIN Their remarkable ACTIONS or SUFFERINGS, VOL. I. LONDON: Printed for T. OSBORNE, J. WHISTON and B. WHITE, AKER J. ROBSON, R. GOADBY, and E. ВАКЕР M DCC LXI. PREFACE. A S it is unnecessary to shew the usefulness of an accurate historical account of fuch persons and facts as have been the objects of public attention in all ages and nations, nothing more can be expected in a preface to this work, than an account of the manner in which it is executed, and the reasons why it was not thought to be precluded by any other work of the fame kind that is already extant. The principal of these works are Bayle's Historical and Critical Dictionary; the General Dictionary; the Biographia Britannica; the Athenæ Oxonienfes, and Mr. Collier's Hiftorical Dictionary. Bayle's work is in five large volumes in folio, yet there are many perfons of great eminence both antient and modern, whom Bayle has not fo so much as named, though he has mentioned others of whom nothing is known, but that they were the occasion or the subject of fome useless controversy, the very terms of which few understand, and the merits of which a small part even of those few are disposed to examine. Bayle's Lives are indeed nothing more than a vehicle for his criticism, and his work seems to have been chiefly the transcript of a voluminous common-place book, in which he had inferted his own remarks on the various authors he had read, and gratified his peculiar turn of mind by discussing their opinions and correcting their mistakes; it is therefore rather a miscellany of critical and metaphyfical speculations, than a system of Biography. The General Dictionary, as it includes Bayle, is so far liable to the same objections: it is indeed augmented with other articles, but they also are written in Bayle's manner, and for that reason the work upon the whole is not much better adapted to general ufe. There are many redundancies, and yet there are many defects; and there is besides an objection of more weight though of another kind, the work confifting of no less than ten volumes in folio, for which the purchaser must pay much more than so many pounds. The The Biographia Britannica, is indeed much more an historical work than Bayle's, but is written upon a much less extensive plan; it contains the Lives of those eminent persons only who were born in Great Britain and Ireland, and of these the chief alone are selected, though many others have a degree of eminence sufficient to render them objects of general curiosity. The Athenæ Oxonienfes is written upon a plan still more contracted, for it contains an account of such authors only, as received their academic education at the University of Oxford. Mr. Collier's Great Historical, Geographical, Genealogical, Poetical Dictionary may possibly seem, by the pretended universality of its plan, to have answered every purpose, which can be proposed from any new work: but this Dictionary is, as its title shews, filled with Geographical and Poetical descriptions, which are no part of our design, and with tedious uninteresting Genealogies which have neither use nor entertainment in them. It is exceedingly defective both as to the number of the lives, and the fullness of the accounts: that is, its accounts of men are too general, too fuperficial, and indeed too short to give fatisfaction. We would not have the reader to conclude from this, that it is any part of our |