tor's degree, was desired, in 1649, to write a vindication of the doctrine of the Trinity, which he performed, and published the next year.

He drew up likewise a confutation of some Socinian tenets advanced by John Fry; a man who spent great part of his life in ranging from one religion to another, and who sat as one of the judges on the king, but was expelled afterwards from the house of commons, and disabled from sitting in parliament. Dr. Cheynel is said to have shewn himself evidently superior to him in the controversy, and was answered by him only with an opprobrious book against the Presbyterian clergy.

Of the remaining part of his life there is found only an obscure and confused account. He quitted the Presidentship of St. John's and the professorship, in 1650, as Calamy relates, because he would not take the engagement; and gave a proof that he could suffer as well as act in a cause which he believed just. We have indeed, no reason to question his resolution, whatever occasion might be given to exert it; nor is it probable that he feared affliction more than danger, or that he would not have borne persecution himself for those opinions which inclined him to persecute others.

He did not suffer much upon this occasion; for he retained the living of Petworth, to which he thenceforward confined his labours, and where he was very assiduous, and as Calamy affirms, very successful in the exercise of his ministry, it being his peculiar character to be warm and zealous in his undertakings.

This heat of his disposition, increased by the uncommon turbulence of the times in which he lived, and by the opposition to which the unpopular nature of some of his employments exposed him, was at last heightened to distraction, so that he was for some years disordered in his understanding, as both Wood and Calamy relate, but with such difference as might be expected from

their opposite principles. Wood appears to think, that a tendency to madness was discoverable in a great part of his life; Calamy, that it was only transient and accidental, though in his additions to his first narrative, he pleads it as an extenuation of that fury with which his kindest friends confess him to have acted on some occasions. Wood declares, that he died little better than distracted; Calamy, that he was perfectly recovered to a sound mind before the Restoration, at which time he retired to Preston, a small village in Sussex, being turned out of his living at Petworth.

It does not appear that he kept his living till the general ejection of the Nonconformists; and it is not unlikely that the asperity of his carriage, and the known virulence of his temper, might have raised him enemies, who were willing to make him feel the effects of persecution which he had so furiously incited against others; but of this incident of his life there is no particular ac

count.

After his deprivation, he lived (till his death, which happened in 1665) at a small village near Chichester, upon a paternal estate, not augmented by the large preferments wasted upon him in the triumphs of his party; having been remarkable, throughout his life, for hospi tality and contempt of money.

H 2

CAVE.*

EDWARD CAVE was born at Newton in Warwickshire, Feb. 29, 1691. His father (Joseph) was the young. er son of Mr. Edward Cave, of Cave's-in-the-hole, a lone-house, on the Street-road in the same county, which took its name from the occupier; but having concurred with his elder brother in cutting off the intail of a small hereditary estate, by which act it was lost from the family, he was reduced to follow in Rugby the trade of a shoe-maker. He was a man of good reputation in his narrow circle, and remarkable for strength and rustick intrepidity. He lived to a great age, and was in his latter years supported by his son.

It was fortunate for Edward Cave, that, having a disposition to literary attainments, he was not cut off by the poverty of his parents from opportunities of cultivating his faculties. The school of Rugby, in which he had, by the rules of its foundation, a right to be instructed, was then in high reputation, under the Rev. Mr. Holyock, to whose care most of the neighbouring families, even of the highest rank, entrusted their sons. He had judgment to discover, and, for some time, generosity

This life first appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1754, and is now printed from a copy revised by the author, at my request, in 1781. N.

to encourage, the genius of young Cave; and was so well pleased with his quick progress in the school that he declared his resolution to breed him for the university, and recommended him as a servitor to some scholars of high rank. But prosperity which depends upon the caprice of others is of short duration. Cave's superiority in literature exalted him to an invidious familiarity with boys who were far above him in rank and expectations; and, as in unequal associations it always happens, whatever unlucky prank was played was imputed to Cave. When any mischief, great or small, was done, though perhaps others boasted of the stratagem when it was successful, yet upon detection or miscarriage the fault was sure to fall upon poor Cave.

At last, his mistress by some invisible means lost a favourite cock. Cave was, with little examination, stigmatized as the thief or murderer; not because he was apparently more criminal than others, but because he was more easily reached by vindictive justice. From that time Mr. Holyock withdrew his kindness visibly from him, and treated him with harshness, which the crime in its utmost aggravation, could scarcely deserve; and which surely he would have forborne, had he considered how hardly the habitual influence of birth and fortune is resisted; and how frequently men, not wholly without sense of virtue, are betrayed to acts more atrocious than the robbery of a henroost, by a desire of pleasing their superiors.

Those reflections his master never made, or made without effect; for under pretence that Cave obstructed the discipline of the school, by selling clandestine assistance, and supplying exercises to idlers, he was oppressed with unreasonable tasks, that there might be an opportunity of quarreling with his failure; and when his diligence had surmounted them, no regard was paid to the performance. Cave bore this persecution awhile,

and then left the school, and the hope of a literary edu cation, to seek some other means of gaining a livelihood.

He was first placed with a collector of the excise, He used to recount with some pleasure a journey or two which he rode with him as his clerk, and relate the victories that he gained over the exciseman in grammatical disputations. But the insolence of his mistress, who employed him in servile drudgery, quickly disgusted him, and he went up to London in quest of more suitable employment.

He was recommended to a timber-merchant at the Bankside, and while he was there on liking, is said to have given hopes of great mercantile abilities; but this place he soon left, I know not for what reason, and was bound apprentice to Mr. Collins, a printer of some reputation, and deputy alderman.

This was a trade for which men were formerly qualified by a literary education, and which was pleasing to Cave, because it furnished some employment for his scholastick attainments. Here, therefore, he resolved to settle, though his master and mistress lived in perpetual 'discord, and their house was therefore no comfortable habitation. From the inconveniencies of these domestick tumults he was soon released, having in only two years attained so much skill in his art, and gained so much the confidence of his master, that he was sent without any superintendant to conduct a printing-office at Norwich, and publish a weekly paper. In this undertaking he met with some opposition, which produced a publick controversy, and procured young Cave the reputation of a writer.

His master died before his apprenticeship was expired; and he was not able to bear the perverseness of his mistress. He therefore quitted her house upon a stipulated allowance, and married a young widow with whom he lived at Bow. When his apprenticeship was over, he worked as a journeyman at the printing house of Mr.