minister of the chapel which that gentleman had recently erected. He was an earnest and indefatigable student, and amassed an immense stock of knowledge in both sacred and secular literature. His congregation rose from being a mere handful of people, to a large, wealthy, and influential community. His sermons were distinguished by sound reasoning, deep pathos, and independent judgment; but their beauty and effect was not seldom marred by the introduction of fantastic criticism of the sacred writings. In 1761 he was appointed afternoon preacher to the congregation of Salters-hall, and afterwards Tuesday lecturer. In 1772 Mr. Farmer resigned the afternoon preaching appointment; and about eight years afterwards the Tuesday lectureship. His resignation of the pastorate at Walthamstow followed. In each case the demission was greatly regretted. As a trustee on Dr. Daniel William's estate, and also on that of Mr. Coward, he had great power, which he used with discretion. After retiring from the pastoral office he usually passed the winter in Bath. As a conversationalist, Mr. Farmer was full of life and brilliancy. Much as his own works were abused, he had no resentment in his breast, and not a whisper against his detractors. His generosity was still more conspicuous in his charitable deeds, than in his frank and winning conversation. He died in the seventy-third year of his age, in February, 1787, and was buried in the family vault of his generous friend, William Snell, Esq. His last will made a handsome provision for his relatives and domestics; a bequest of one hundred pounds to the fund for the widows of dissenting ministers; a donation to the poor of Walthamstow parish; and a pecuniary legacy to every member of the family of his old and valued patron. There was one clause in it which required his trustees to burn all his manuscripts. There perished in the flames a second volume "On the Demonology of the Ancients," "A Dissertation on the History of Balaam," and a second edition of his "Treatise on Miracles." The works of Mr. Farmer were—"A Discourse on the suppression of the Rebellion;" "An inquiry into the nature and design of Christ's temptation in the wilderness," showing that the whole was a divine vision; "An Essay on the Demoniacs of the New Testament;" "The general prevalence of the worship of human spirits in the ancient heathen nations."—J. L. A.
FARMER, John, a learned English musician of the Elizabethan era. The dates of his birth and decease are unknown. In 1591 he published a treatise entitled "Divers and sundrie waies of two Parts in one, to the number of fourtie, upon one playn Song; sometimes placing the Ground above, and the Parts benethe, and otherwise the Ground benethe, and the Parts above," &c. It is dedicated to the earl of Oxenford. In 1599 he dedicated to the same nobleman, "The first sett of English Madrigals, to four voices;" in the preface to which he professes to have "fully linked his music to number, as each gives to the other its true effect, which is to move delight; a virtue, so singular in the Italians, as under that ensign only they hazard their honour." This assertion is so far from being true, that t here appears, says Burney, "more false accent in Farmer's songs than in those of any of his contemporaries."—E. F. R.
FARMER, Richard, D.D., chiefly noted as the author of a curious dissertation on the learning of Shakspeare, was born on the 28th of August, 1735, at Leicester, where his father was a considerable maltster. Educated at the free grammar-school of his native town, he proceeded at eighteen to Cambridge, with a good reputation both as regarded intellect and disposition, and was entered a pensioner at Emmanuel college. In his academic career he had fair success, but was distinguished by his proficiency in the classics and belles-lettres, rather than in theology and mathematics. A man of a careless, jovial, jocular disposition, he nevertheless took orders, became classical tutor of his college, and even, in 1765, was appointed junior proctor of the university. In the May of the following year he issued proposals for a history of his native Leicester, with which he made considerable way, but which was finally abandoned by him. His labours, however, were not altogether lost, for he presented the plates and some of the materials to John Nichols, the printer and antiquary, by whom they were turned to account in that industrious compiler's well-known history of Leicestershire. Farmer was a man of one book, and that one was published in the year which followed the first circulation of his Leicester-proposals. In 1766 appeared his "Essay on the learning of Shakspeare, addressed to Joseph Purdock, Esq.," a thin octavo, which contained a promise never kept, that its author would return to the subject. The effect produced by the essay was decided; it readied a second edition (considerably enlarged) in 1767, a third in 1789, and has been reprinted in Stevens', Reed's, and Harris' edition of Shakspeare. Little read now, perhaps. Farmer's essay seems, from the references occasionally made to it, somewhat misunderstood. The ordinary notion respecting it appears to be, that Farmer was a self-sufficient scholar, who amused himself with a demonstration of Shakspeare's ignorance of the classics. His essay, however, was provoked, by the efforts of contemporary pedants to discover in Shakspeare continual and recondite allusions to the Greek and Roman writers, and to prove him, in spite of Ben Jonson's celebrated dictum, a profound classical scholar. Out of no disrespect to Shakspeare, whom he cordially admired, but with a great contempt for the laborious trifling of some of his commentators, Farmer good-naturedly, but irrefragably showed, that Shakspeare's knowledge of the classics was in every case a second-hand one, and that most of the expressions and allusions which he was alleged to have borrowed from the Greek and Roman writers, were rife in the published English works of his contemporaries. Farmer's knowledge of the Elizabethan literature was, for those days, immense; and he did great, though indirect service to the study of Shakspeare's text, by indicating the works of the Elizabethan prose-writers and dramatists as much the best source for elucidating the obscurities of his plays. Two years after the publication of the essay, its author was nominated one of the preachers at Whitehall, which necessitated an annual residence for several months in the metropolis; and this gave him facilities for the purchase of old books, especially old English poems and plays, in which he accumulated a unique collection. In 1775 he was appointed master of his college, a post which he retained until his death, and in which he distinguished himself both by his steady adherence to tory principles, and by his successful zeal for local improvements, in the way of lighting and paving the town of Cambridge. He served in his turn the office of vice-chancellor, and was in 1778 appointed principal librarian of the university. After receiving some minor ecclesiastical preferments, he was made, at the instance of Lord North, a prebendary of Canterbury, in the streets of which city he was seen by a writer in the supplement to the old edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, on his way to pay his respects to the archbishop, "dressed in stockings of unbleached thread, brown breeches, and a wig not worth a shilling." After several years, Mr. Pitt bestowed on him a canon-residentiaryship of St. Paul's, which restored him to the metropolis for several months in the year. In that position, it is worth recording, he laboured energetically and successfully to effect the introduction of sculpture into St. Paul's—the statue of Howard the philanthropist being the first of the kind admitted into it. Between London and Cambridge, Dr. Farmer led for the rest of his days a pleasant, convivial, book-buying, and book-reading life, declining a bishopric twice offered him. "One that enjoyed," he said himself, "the theatre and the Queen's Head in the evening, would have made but an indifferent bishop." He died at Emmanuel college on the 8th of September, 1797, and was buried in its chapel. The sale of his library, which was supposed to have cost him less than £500, realized upwards of £2000. Dr. Parr has chaunted his praises in stately prose. An interesting account of Dr. Farmer, by one who knew him personally, will be found, as already noted, in the Encyclopædia Britannica, and another in Nichol's Literary Anecdotes of the eighteenth century.—F. E.
FARMER, Thomas, an excellent musician, and particularly successful in the composition of songs. He was originally one of the "waits" of London; and having attained some reputation as a composer for the theatre, he was admitted to the degree of bachelor in music at the university of Cambridge in 1684. Many of his songs are contained in the Theatre of Musick, and the Treasury of Musick; and he was the composer of two collections of airs, the one printed in 1686, entitled "A Consort of Musick, in four parts;" and the other in 1690, entitled "A second Consort of Musick." He died at an early age, before the year 1695; and the estimation in which he was held by his contemporaries may be judged by the elegy which was written upon his death by Nahum Tate, the poet-laureate, and set to music by Henry Purcell. This flattering tribute to departed genius is printed in the Orpheus Britannicus.—E. F. R.
FARNABIE, Thomas, according to Anthony Wood, "the
