Volume 10

A new general biographical dictionary / projected and partly arranged by the late Rev. Hugh James Rose.

  • Hugh James Rose
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A new general biographical dictionary / projected and partly arranged by the late Rev. Hugh James Rose. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    MAR ferment he resigned on becoming rector translations of the New Testament made of Pertenhall, in Bedfordshire, where he under the instructions of the Society, both died in 1825, in the eighty-ninth year of into Persian and Hindustanee. He made his age. He was a member of the Royal also some progress in an Arabic transla- Society. His principal works are, Plantae tion. In his capacity of missionary he Cantabrigienses; Catalogus Horti Canta- traversed large tracts both of India and brigiensis; Elements of Natural History; Persia. After above five years’ labour A Translation of Rousseau’s Letters on in these countries, his health began to Botany, with large Additions ; Sketch of decline ; and, his strength wholly failing a Tour through France, Switzerland, and him, he was obliged to halt at Tokat, in Italy; Another Tour in Italy, with Cata- Asia Minor, wherein a few days he died, logues of Curiosities in the principal October 16, 1812. An account of his Cities of that Country; Flora Rustica; life, compiled from various Journals left and, Language of Botany. He also edited by him, was published by the Rev. John Miller’s Gardener’s and Botanist’s Die- Sargent, in 1819. tionary, 4 vols, fol.; and his father’s Dis- MARTYR, (Peter,) one of the early sertations and Critical Remarks on the reformers, was descended from a re- iEneid of Virgil, containing, among other interesting particulars, a full vindi- cation of the poet from the charge of an anachronism with regard to the foundation of Carthage. To this work, which was published in ]2mo, 1770, he prefixed a life of the author, and a complete cata- logue of his works. He was also em- ployed upon a work which appeared in 1773, entitled, The Antiquities of Her- culaneum, translated from the Italian, by Thomas Martyn and John Lettice, Bachelors of Divinity, and Fellows of Sidney college, Cambridge, vol. i. con- taining the Pictures. On this laborious work he and his coadjutor had been em- ployed for five years. The original had been printed at the expense of the king of Naples. He was also secretary to the Society for the Improvement of Naval Architecture. MARTYN, (Henry,) a zealous and devoted missionary, was born in 1781 at Truro, in Cornwall, where his father was a labourer in the mines at Gwennap, till, by indefatigable application, he qualified himself for a clerkship in the counting- house of an eminent merchant at Truro. Henry was educated at the grammar- school of that town, and at St. John’s college, Cambridge, of which he was chosen fellow. In 1803 he took orders; and about the same time contracted an intimacy with the Rev. Charles Simeon, the celebrated evangelical preacher in the university of Cambridge, and resolved to devote lrimself to the labours of a mis- sionary. With this view he offered him- self to the African and Eastern Missionary Society, and embarked for India in 1S05. It now became necessary that he should make himself master of the languages of the countries which he was about to visit; and he studied them with such success, that he had the superintendence of the 6 spectable family of the name of Vermigli, and was born at Florence in 1500. His parents gave him the surname of Martyr, in honour of Peter the Martyr, a Milanese saint, whose church was near their house. When he was sixteen years of age he took the habit among the regular canons of the order of St. Augustine, at the monastery of Fiesoli, near Florence, where he went through his course of rhetoric, diligently reading at the same time the sacred Scriptures; and in 1519 he was sent to the monastery' of St. John of Ver- dera, at Padua, where he studied philo- sophy, and the Greek language, and acquired the character of the first scholar in his order. In his twenty-sixth year he was appointed to the service of the pulpit, and preached to crowded audi- tories, with universal applause, at Brixia, Rome, Venice, Mantua, and several other cities of Italy. Hitherto the divinity which he had studied was chiefly that of the schools ; but now he applied with the greatest diligence to the study of the Scriptures ; and, that he might under- stand the Old Testament in the original, he made himself master of Hebrew, with the assistance of Isaac, a Jewish physi- cian at Bologna. He next read lectures in philosophy, divinity, and on the Greek language, in different houses belonging to his order, and was chosen abbot of Spoleto; and three years afterwards he was appointed principal of the college of St. Peter ad aram, at Naples: a post of great dignity, and supported by ample revenues. Here he applied himself with increasing assiduity to the study of the Scriptures; and having met with the writings of Zuinglius and Bucer, he be- came fully sensible of many of the abuses, both in doctrine and discipline, of the church of Rome, and began to think favourably of the cause of the reformers.
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