mised to side with the conquerors. On this the king appointed a conference to be held at Whitehall, at which his majesty and several persons of rank were present. The protestant champions were Dr. Patrick and Dr. William Jane, the two chaplains then in waiting. Those on the popish side were Gifford, a doctor of the Sorbonne, probably the same whom king James wished to obtrude upon Magdalen-college, and a Mr. Tilden, who, having turned papist at Lisbon, went by the name of Dr. Godden. The subject of their dispute was the rule of faith,' and 'the proper judge in controversies.' The conference was very long; and at last the Romish doctors were pressed with so much strength of reason and authority against them, that they were really put to silence. On this the earl of Rochester declared that the victory the protestant divines had gained made no alteration in his mind, being beforehand convinced of the truth of his religion, and firmly resolved never to forsake it.' The king, going off abruptly, was heard to say, he never saw a bad cause so well, nor a good one so ill maintained."

Such is the account given of this debate by Kennet in his "Complete History of England:" bishop Burnet's account is somewhat different. He says, "That the king desired of the earl, he would suffer himself to be instructed in religion. He answered, he was fully satisfied about his religion; but, upon the king's pressing it that he would hear his priests, he said he desired then to have some of the English clergy present, to which the king consented; only he excepted to Tillotson and Stillingfleet. Lord Rochester said he would take those who should happen to be in waiting; for the forms of the chapel were still kept up. And Drs. Patrick and Jane were the men." "Patrick," adds Burnet, "" told me, that at the conference there was no occasion for them to say much. The priests began the attack. And when they had done, the earl said, if they had nothing stronger to urge, he would not trouble those learned gentlemen to say any thing; for he was sure he could answer all that he had heard. And so answered all with much heat and spirit, not without some scorn, saying, Were these grounds to persuade men to change their religion? This he urged over and over again with great vehemence. The king, seeing in what temper he was, broke off the conference, charging all that were present to say nothing of it."

The king had often taken pains to gain over Patrick; sent for him, treated him kindly, desired him to abate his zeal against his church, and quietly enjoy his own religion: but the dean replied, with proper courage, "That he could not give up a religion so well proved as that of the Protestants." Conformably to this principle, he opposed the reading of his majesty's declaration for liberty of conscience; and assisted Dr. Tenison in setting up a school at St. Martin's, in opposition to the popish one, opened at the Savoy, in order to seduce the youth of the town into popery; and this was the origin of the ward and parish schools of London. He had also a great share in the comprehension projected by archbishop Sancroft, in order to bring over the dissenters, which, it is well known, was unsuccessful.

- At the Revolution in 1688, great use was made of the dean, who was very active in settling the affairs of the church he was called upon to preach before the prince and princess of Orange; and was soon after appointed one of the commissioners for the review of the liturgy. He was thought to have excellent talents for devotional composition, and his part now was to revise the collects of the whole year, in which he introduced some amendments and improvements of style. In October 1689, he was made. bishop of Chichester; and employed, with others of the.. new bishops, to compose the disorders of the church of Ireland. In July 1691, he was translated to the see of Ely, in the room of Turner, who was deprived for refusing the oaths to government. Here he continued to perform all the offices of a good bishop, as well as a good man, which he had ever proved himself on all occasions. died at Ely, May 31, 1707, aged eighty; and was interred in the cathedral, where a monument is erected to his memory, with an inscription said to have been written by Dr. Leng, afterwards bishop of Norwich.

He

This prelate was one of the most learned men as well as best writers of his time. We have noticed his principal writings, but have still to add his "Paraphrases" and Commentaries upon the Old Testament, as far as the prophets, which are the result of extensive reading, and perhaps the most useful of any ever written in the English language. They were published at various times, but reprinted in 2 vols. folio; and, with Lowth on the Prophets, Arnald on the Apocrypha, and Whitby on the New Testament, have

been published, in folio, and very recently in 4to, as a regular commentary upon all the sacred books.

The style of this prelate is even and easy, his compositions rational, and full of good and sound sense. Burnet ranks him

among those many worthy and eminent clergymen in this nation, who deserved a high character; and were indeed an honour to the church, and to the age in which they lived.

Our prelate had a brother John Patrick, preacher at the Charter-house, according to Wharton, and one of the translators of Plutarch. Dr. Samuel Patrick, the editor of an edition of Ainsworth's Dictionary was also at the Charterhouse, but whether a relation does not appear, Wharton also says he had a son, who wasted an estate left him by his father, and it was sold, after his death, "for debts and portions." Mrs. Catherine Patrick, a maiden lady of eightytwo years old, said to be our prelate's grand-daughter, died at Bury in 1792. Whiston speaks of a life of bishop Patrick, written by himself, which he had read, and which was in Dr. Knight's hands, but where now, is not known.'

PATRIX (PETER), a French minor poet, was born at Caen in 1585, and being the son of a lawyer, was designed by his father for the same profession. This destination, which seldom suits a poetical imagination, was accordingly rejected by Patrix, who addicted himself entirely to poetry. About the age of forty, he attached himself to the court of Gaston, duke of Orleans, to whom, and to his widow, Margaret of Lorraine, he faithfully devoted his services. A Norman accent, and a certain affectation of rustic simplicity, did not prevent him from being in high favour at that little court: his wit, liveliness, and social talent, making amends for such imperfections. Towards the latter end of life, he became strongly touched with sentiments of religion, and suppressed, as far as he could, the licentious poems which he had written in his youth. He lived to the great age of eighty-eight, and died at Paris in 1672. At eighty, he had a violent illness, and when he recovered from it, his friends advised him to leave his bed; "Alas!" said he, "at my time of life, it is hardly worth while to take the trouble of dressing myself again." He proved however mistaken, as to the shortness of his subsequent

1 Biog. Brit.-Gen. Dict.-Burnet's Own Times.Whiston's Memoirs.-Restituta, vol. I. p. 56,-Birch's Life of Tillotson.-Cole's MS Athenæ in British Museum.

life. Of his works there are extant, 1. A collection of
verses entitled "La misericorde de Dieu sur un pecheur
pénitent," Blois, 1660, 4to. These were written in his
age, yet possess some fire.
2. "Plaints des Consonnes
qui n'ont pas l'honneur d'entrer dans le nom de Neufger-
main," preserved in the works of Voiture. 3. Miscellane-
ous poems, in the collection of Barbin. The greater part
of them are feeble, with the exception of a few original
passages. The poem most known was made a few days
before his death. It is called the Dream; and, though it
is of a serious cast, a translation of it, oddly enough, pos-
sesses a place in all our English jest books, beginning, "I
dreamt that buried in my fellow-clay," &c. It asserts a
moral and religious axiom, which is undeniable, that death
levels all conditions. The original is little known; it is
this:

Je songeois cette nuit que, de mal consumé,
Côte à côte d'un Pauvre on m'avoit inhumé,
Et que n'en pouvant pas souffrir le voisinage,
En mort de qualité je lui tins ce langage:
"Retire toi, coquin! va pourrir loin d'ici,
Il ne t'appartient pas de m'approcher ainsi."

Coquin!" me dit il, d'une arrogance extreme,
"Va chercher tes coquins ailleurs, coquin toi-même!
Ici tous sont egaux; je ne te dois plus rien;

Je suis sur mon fumier, comme toi sur le tien." ' PATRIZI (FRANCIS, or PATRICIUS), a platonic philosopher and man of letters, was boru, in 1529, at Clissa in Illyricum, and was educated at Padua. In 1553 he began to appear as an author by some miscellaneous Italian tracts. In 1557, with the view of obtaining the patronage of the duke of Ferrara, he published a panegyrical poem on the house of Este, entitled "L'Eridano," in a novel kind of heroic verse of thirteen syllables. After this, for several years, he passed an unsettled kind of life, in which he twice visited the isle of Cyprus, where he took up his abode for seven years, and which he finally quitted on its reduction by the Turks in 1571. He also travelled into France and Spain, and spent three years in the latter country, collecting a treasure of ancient Greek MSS. which he lost on his return to Italy. In 1578 he was invited to Ferrara by duke Alphonso II. to teach philosophy in the university of that city. Afterwards, upon the ac

1. Niceron, vol. XXIV.—Moreri.—Dict. Hist.

cession of Clement VIII. to the popedom, he was appointed public professor of the Platonic philosophy at Rome, an office which he held with high reputation till his death, in 1597. He professed to unite the doctrines of Aristotle and Plato, but in reality undermined the authority of the former. He wholly deserted the obscurity of the Jewish Cabbala, and in teaching philosophy closely followed the ancient Greek writers. During his lecturing at Rome, he more openly discovered his aversion to the Aristotelian philosophy, and advised the pope to prohibit the teaching of it in the schools, and to introduce the doctrine of Plato, as more consonant to the Christian faith. His "Discussiones Peripateticæ," a learned, perspicuous, and elegant work, fully explains the reason on which his disapprobation of the Peripatetic philosophy was founded. He was one of the first of the moderns who attentively observed the phenomena of nature, and he made use of every opportunity, that his travels afforded him, for collecting remarks concerning various points of astronomy, meteorology, and natural history. In one of his "Dialogues on Rhetoric," he advanced, under the fiction of an Ethiopic tradition, a theory of the earth which some have thought similar to that afterwards proposed by Dr. Thomas Burnet. His other principal works were, "Nova Geometria," 1587; "Paralleli Militari," 1594, both of which are full of whimsical theories; and an elaborate edition of "Oracula Zoroastris, Hermetis Trismegisti, et aliorum ex scriptis Platonicorum collecta, Græce et Latine, prefixa Dissertatione Historica," 1591.'

PATRU (OLIVER), a polite scholar, and memorable for being one of the first polishers and refiners of the French language, was born in 1604 at Paris, where his father was procurator to the parliament. After studying the law, and being received an advocate, he went into Italy; and, on his return to Paris, frequented the bar. "He was the first," says Voltaire, "who introduced correctness and purity of language in pleadings." He obtained the reputation of a most exact speaker and excellent writer, and was esteemed so perfectly knowing in grammar aud in his own language, that all his decisions were submitted to as oracles. Vaugelas, the famous grammarian, to whom the French language was greatly indebted, for much of its

1 Gen. Dict.-Landi Hist. Litt, d'Italie.-Brucker.-Rees's Cyclopedia.