occupations that for which the mind, the acquirements, and the predictions of Lowth were best adapted. His critical acquaintance with the Hebrew tongue, and his appreciation of the style of oriental poetry, supported by the reputation already earned by his "Prælectiones" and his general character as a scholar and divine, all tended to raise the expectations of the learned to a degree which nothing short of consummate excellence could satisfy, and it is no mean praise that the work was hailed on its appearance with something more than general approval." It immediately took rank as a classical work, and was translated the very next year into German by Professor Koppe of Göttingen, with additional notes, as the "Prælectiones" had antecedently been by Professor J. D. Michaelis. The judgment of later scholars, however, has made some deductions from the indiscriminate praise which the work in the first instance called forth. The critical principles which Lowth applied to the correction of the Hebrew text of Isaiah have been justly censured as much too free and arbitrary; he indulged much too readily in the license of conjectural emendations of the original; and it is now generally allowed, that if he had understood Hebrew as accurately as the Hebraists of our own age have done, he would have been sensible that such freedoms were as unnecessary as they were unjustifiable. He was a greater master, after all, of English than of Hebrew grammar, and his "Short Introduction to English Grammar," published in 1762, was very often reprinted—of which Harris remarked in his Philological Inquiries, "that every lover of the English language, if he would write or even speak it with purity and precision, ought to study and understand Dr. Lowth's admirable tract." In addition to the works already named, Lowth was the author of several pieces of a controversial character. These were his "Larger Confutation of Bishop Hare's System of Hebrew Metre," published in 1766, in which he completely exploded the credit of that theory; and his "Letter to Warburton, in answer to the appendix to the fifth volume of the Divine Legation of Moses demonstrated," 1765. Warburton had attacked Lowth in an article concerning the book of Job, "in language of the most coarse and insolent contumely," and Lowth's reply excited the warmest interest in the literary and theological classes of the community. "The public at large, and even, it is said, the monarch, were pleased with its very faults, and welcomed the sallies of personal satire by which the giant and his underlings were overwhelmed." A war of personalities, however, ill became the dignity of eminent scholars and bishops, and the quarrel was afterwards made up between them, with expressions of mutual regret. In 1783 he had the offer of the primacy of Canterbury, but his advanced years and failing health obliged him to decline that dignity, whereupon he was invited, in conjunction with Bishop Hurd, to nominate a substitute, viz. Dr. Moore. He died at Fulham, full of years and honours, November 3, 1787, and was succeeded in his see by Beilby Porteous, who in his primary charge characterized the genius of his predecessor in the following terms:—"We may justly admire the universality of that genius which could apply itself, and with almost equal success, to so many different branches of literature—to poetry, to grammar, to criticism, to theology, to oriental learning. In each of these he has displayed the talents of a master, and the originality of true genius." His "Sermons and other Remains"—including several poems, epitaphs, &c—were collected and published in 1834, with an Introductory Memoir by the Rev. Peter Hall, M.A., in which also will be found his "Larger Confutation" and his "Letter to the Clergy of his Diocese on the Laws of Simony."—P. L.
LOWTH, William, a learned divine of the Church of England, was the son of William Lowth, a respectable apothecary in London, and was born in the parish of St. Martin, Ludgate, September 11, 1661. He was educated at Merchant Tailors' school and St. John's college, Oxford, where he took the degrees of M.A. and B.D. in 1683 and 1688. Dr. Peter Mew was then president of St. John's, and had a high opinion of his worth and learning, which he showed on his being elevated to the see of Winchester by making him his chaplain, and conferring upon him a prebend in his cathedral in 1696, and the rectory of Buriton in Hants in 1699. In these offices he continued till his death, which took place on May 17, 1732. His learning was extensive and exact. "There was scarcely any ancient author—Greek or Latin, profane or ecclesiastical, especially the latter—but what he had read with a critical accuracy; constantly accompanying his reading with critical and philological remarks, and of his collections in this way he was upon all occasions extremely communicative." Dr. Potter's edition of Clemens Alexandrinus, Hudson's Josephus, Reading's Ecclesiastical Historians, were all enriched with learned notes from his pen; and Bishop Chandler consulted him on many critical points of difficulty which he met with in preparing his Defence of Christianity from the Prophecies of the Old Testament. His own earliest publication was—"A Vindication of the Divine Authority and Inspiration of the Old and New Testament," which appeared in 1692, and was intended as a reply to Five Letters concerning the Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, which had recently been translated from the French of Le Clerc. The second edition, published in 1699, contained a new preface, "wherein the antiquity of the Pentateuch is asserted and vindicated from some late objections." In 1708 appeared his "Directions for the Profitable Reading of the Holy Scriptures, together with some observations for the confirming of their divine authority, and illustrating the difficulties thereof," which passed through several editions. He also brought out a valuable series of commentaries on the Old Testament—on Isaiah, in 1714; on Jeremiah, in 1718; on Ezekiel, in 1723; and on Daniel and the Minor Prophets, in 1726, which were afterwards collected and republished with additions, in folio, as a continuation of Bishop Patrick's Commentary. He was also the author of a sermon on the "Characters of an Apostolical Church fulfilled in the Church of England, and our obligations to continue in the communion of it," 1722, which involved him in a controversy with Mr. John Norman, a dissenting minister of Portsmouth. The memoir of his life, inserted in the Biographia Britannica, was communicated by his more celebrated son, the subject of the preceding memoir.—P. L.
LOYOLA, Ignatius, or properly, Inigo de Recalde, the far-famed originator and general of the Society of Jesus, and the man whose fervour and genius, devoted to the service of the papacy at the moment of Luther's assault upon it, no doubt then took effect to stay the progress of the Reformation, and which in its results, through a century or more, gave force to that reaction in favour of Romanism, apart from which, not improbably, it would have fallen under the weight of its own abuses and corruptions. Loyola, with one or two of the more able of his colleagues, by their united energy and their unhesitating adherence to a single principle of action, breathed a new life into the decrepid body of the Romish system, imparting to it at once a moral intensity and the vigour of centralized action. At the same time this new order contributed to its treasurers a vast and various fund of learning and of various accomplishments. Every Roman catholic country—and this means Europe entire—westward of the borders of the Greek church, as well as the extensive possessions of Spain and Portugal in the two Indies, received their share of this new impulse, and each, on the strength of it, started anew upon the course of religious action.
In narrating what is known, or rather what is presumed to be known, of the personal history of the founder of jesuitism, a perplexity stands in our way; for these incidents of a story, of which scores quite as remarkable are found in the calendar of the saintly orders, offer to our curiosity little indeed which seems to indicate that we are coming into the presence of a mind of commanding and originative power. One is tempted to ask if it be so that this devotee, this untaught and passionate soul, can indeed be the man who was able to counterbalance the moral weight, and to circumvent the gigantic force, of Luther and his colleagues on the field of religious strife. In seeking a solution of this problem, the preliminary question presents itself—Are we indeed possessed of the authentic memorials of Loyola's personal history? do we know what were the doings, the sayings, the actual performances, of Ignatius Loyola in the creation and the government of the order of which he is the reputed founder? To this preliminary question an uncertain answer is the best that can be given. Loyola—let not the apparent solecism of the phrase be blamed—is one of those worthies who has suffered canonization; and it was a canonization enacted under very peculiar influences, and brought about for effecting unusual purposes. In any instance, when the Church of Rome confers upon one of its favourites a diploma of aristocratic rank in the upper skies, the real man, or the real woman, is removed in this process from the domain of ordinary and veracious history, and is led forward to take his position within a circle where the
