MELVILLE, HENRY DUNDAS, Lord Viscount, son of Robert Dundas, Lord Arniston, was born in 1740, and joined the administration of Mr. Pitt when he obtained the reins of government, after the death of the marquis of Rockingham. Lord Melville followed the fortunes of his leader, in or out of office, as home secretary, secretary of war, and first lord of the admiralty. He was impeached for neglect of duty in the latter capacity at the instance of Mr. Whitbread in 1805, but acquitted of the charges by his peers. He retired from office, however, and died in privacy 1811. MELVILLE, R., a Scotch officer, 1723-1809. MENDEZ, MOSES, an English poet, died 1758. MENNES, or MENNIS, SIR JOHN, a military and naval commander, and member of the government after the restoration, kn. as a poet, 1598-1671. MERDDIN, a Welch poet, 6th century. MERLIN, AMBROSE, who has the reputation of an enchanter in the romance of Chivalry, 5th c. MERRET, CHRISTOPHER, a native of Gloucestershire, known in London as a physician and naturalist, 1614-1695. MERRICK, JAMES, a clergyman of the Church of England, chiefly known as a poet, and called by Bishop Lowth one of the best of men, and most eminent of scholars,' 1720-1769. MERRY, ROBERT, a poet and dramat., 1755-98. MESTON, W., a Scottish poet, 1688-1745. METCALFE, CHARLES THEOPHILUS, Lord, an East Indian officer and diplomatist, who was appointed governor of Jamaica after the emancipation of the negroes, and subsequently governor of Canada, 1785-1846. the court, and against those who had brought into the country the bludie gullie' of absolute power. This fearless charge led to a citation before the privy council for high treason, and though the crime was not proved, he was sentenced to imprisonment. Apprehensive that his life was really in danger, he set out for London, and did not return to the north till the faction of Arran had been dismissed.. At length he took his former place in St. Andrews, and continued in hearty warfare for the liberties of the church. For his share in the trial of Adamson, the king dismissed him from the principality, and charged him to confine himself beyond the Water of Tay. The suspension, however, was only brief. On the arrival of James with his queen from Denmark, Melville pronounced, and afterwards published, a Latin poem of high merit, named 'Stephaniskion.' In 1590 Melville was elected rector of the university. In 1594 he was again moderator of the General Assembly. There was evidently after this time a strong desire on the part of the king to make the kirk a mere tool of political power, or to restore episcopacy. Melville strenuously resisted every such attempt. A tumult in Edinburgh was taken advantage of, its ministers were severely dealt with, and by and by Melville was prohibited from attending church courts, and soon after confined within the precincts of his college. After King James's accession to the throne of England, Melville was summoned to London, with several of his brethren, and severely catechised and reprimanded by the royal pedant. Melville enraged the king by some verses he happened to write on the furniture of the royal altar, was found guilty of scandalum magnatum, finally imprisoned in the Tower, and deprived of his principality. At length, after four years' confinement, he was liberated, principally at the request of the duke of Bouillon, who wished him to occupy a chair in the university of Sedan. Melville arrived there in 1611, entered on his work with zeal, boldly refuted the Arminianism of one of his colleges, and in his seventyfourth year wrote a beautiful Epithalamium on occasion of the marriage of a daughter of the ducal MIDDLETON, CONYERS, well known as a pohouse. Episcopal government had now been re- lemical writer and critic, was the son of William stored in Scotland; but the old man was still such Middleton, a Yorkshire clergyman, and was born an object of terror that he was not recalled from at York 1683. In 1717 he was created a doctor of exile. In 1620 his health, which had been seri- divinity by the mandamus of George I., on his visit ously impaired during his incarceration in the to Cambridge, and his refusal to pay the fees deTower, failed him, and he died at Sedan in 1622, manded by Bentley, the regius professor of divinity. at the age of seventy-seven. Melville's Latin involved him in a lawsuit, and, finally, in an acpoems, such as his Carmen Mosis,' and those men- tion for libel brought against him by that gentletioned already in this article, are classical produc-man. The enmity thus established between them, tions of a high order. He was a scholar and divine issued in a literary and critical controversy, which also of no common attainments. He was active, was interrupted by Middleton's going to Italy in cheerful, bold, candid and devout, and his im- 1724, for the benefit of his health. In 1729, after petuosity often arose to sublimity, when he ap- a controversy with Dr. Mead, concerning the conpeared in excited vindication of his church and dition of the medical men of ancient Rome, he country. Dr. M'Crie concludes his two interest-published his 'Letter from Rome,' showing the ing volumes of Melville's life with the declaration: similarity between the Roman Catholic religion and I know of no individual, after her Reformer, the pagan rituals of antiquity. This work acquired from whom Scotland has received greater benefits, a great popularity, but it laid its author open to and to whom she owes a deeper debt of gratitude the suspicion of being at heart an unbeliever; and respect, than Andrew Melville.' [J.E.] and, two years later, his animadversions on Dr 1 MEYRICK, SIR S. R., a lawyer of the ecclesiastical court, author of a Critical Inquiry into Ancient Armour,' on which subject he is considered an authority, 1783-1848. MICKLE, WILLIAM JULIUS, a Scottish poet and scholar, employed as corrector of the Clarendon Press at Oxford, translator of the Lusiad of Camcens, and author of some of the Old Ballads,' published by Evans, the bookseller. Born in Dumfries 1734, died 1788. Waterland, who had written against Tindal, created such a feeling against him that he had nearly been deprived of his degrees. The line of argument adopted by Middleton, who professed to show a better method of dealing with the freethinkers, will speak for itself; and it is stated thus succinctly in Tayler's 'Retrospect,'-' He shows from history the inadequacy of the simple religion of reason to the necessities of the multitude, and that, in every civilized community, there has always been a traditional system of faith and worship adapted to them, distinct from the speculations of philosophical minds; that where such a system was already established, though mixed with much superstition and folly, it would be wrong to attempt its overthrow, without being prepared to put something better fitted for the purpose in its place; that Socrates, and the wisest of the heathen, always acted on this principle; and that, consequently, it must, à fortiori, be much more absurd and mischievous to endeavour to substitute the simple inferences of reason for a belief in Christianity, which is the best of all traditional religions, the best contrived to promote peace and the good of society, and acknowledged by deists themselves to come the nearest of all others to their perfect law of reason and nature.' Such a book of course exposed Middleton to a fresh controversy, in the course of which, 1731, he was appointed to the professorship of mineralogy, then recently founded by Woodward. In 1734 he abandoned this uncongenial appointment for that of librarian to the university. In 1735 he wrote, controversially as usual, concerning the origin of printing in England. In 1741 he published his greatest work, the History of Cicero,' in 2 vols. 4to, which was the signal for a scholastic controversy on the authenticity of certain documents adopted by him. In 1749, having thrown out an *Introductory Discourse' on the same subject two years previously, he gave to the astonished quidnuncs of the period his Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers which are supposed to have subsisted in the Christian Church from the earliest ages.' For their replies to this work, Dodwell and Church obtained the degree of D.D. from the University of Oxford. Middleton, however, published his 'Vindication,' and, the year following, made an attack on Dr. Sherlock, endeavouring to show that there is no uniform chain of prophecy pointing to the Saviour. With such views as we have indicated, this singular divine could yet accept the living of Hascomb, in Surrey, which he held at his death in 1750. The only excuse we could imagine for such a career as Middleton's, must be found in the unsettled state of the Church of England at the commencement of last century-in all the circumstances, to speak briefly, by which we should account for the rise of Wesleyanism, and the various movements of dissent and free inquiry, which marked the period. [E.R.] MIDDLETON, ERASMUS, a methodist scholar of Oxford, author of a Dictionary of Arts and Sciences,' last century. · MIDDLETON, SIR HUGH, a citizen and gold smith of London, celebrated for bringing a supply of water to the metropolis, was son of Richard Middleton, Esq., governor of Denbigh castle. The date of his birth, and the early events of his life, are unknown, with the exception of the fact that he had been engaged in mining adventures in Wales. This costly enterprise for supplying London with the fresh streams of Hertfordshire, dates from 1608 to Michaelmas-day 1613, when the water was admitted into the reservoir at Pentonville, at a cost of nearly half-a-million sterling. Middleton was subsequently reduced to the necessity of occupying himself as an engineer. He was created a baronet in 1622, and died 1631. MIDDLETON, R., a learned theologian, d. 1304. MIDDLETON, T., a dramatic writer, d. 1627. MIDDLETON, THOMAS FANSHAWE, the first English bishop of Calcutta, was born at Redleston, in Derbyshire, where his father was rector, in 1769, and consecrated at Lambeth in 1814. He departed for the East the same year, and in 1820 founded a college at Calcutta for the education of clergymen and missionaries devoted to our Eastern possessions. His principal work is an erudite dissertation on the Greek article, which has given rise to some controversy. Died 1822. MIDDLETON, W., a Welch poet, 16th century. MILBOURNE, LUKE, a Church of England minister, known as a poet and critical wr., d. 1720. MILDENHALL, J., a diplomatist of the age of Elizabeth, celeb. for his treaty of alliance with Persia, concluded in defiance of the Jesuits in 1606. MILDMAY, SIR WALTER, a statesman of the age of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, disting. as the founder of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, d. 1589. MILHOUSE, R., a poetical wr. in the humble occupation of a weaver, au. of 'Sherwood Forest,' Vicissitude,' "The Destinies of Man,' died 1839. MILL, JAMES, born in Kincardineshire on 6th April, 1773; died at Kensington 23d June, 1836: one of the three or four remarkable minds which, in the generation just past, have vindicated the title of Scotland to a place of high glory in the annals of Inquiry and Thought. Mr. Mill was originally designed for the Scottish Church; but reflection inclined him to abandon a purpose of Life, which, however honourable, was not suited to his peculiar intellectual tendencies: and after some intermediate passages, he settled in London as a literary man in 1800, where he resided ever afterwards, and gained his very distinguished name. The work by which Mill earliest rose into notice is the History of British India, one that through the profoundity of its general views, and its liberal spirit, will remain a classic among our English Histories. It is not, in merely literary characteristics, on a level with the remarkable productions of HUME or GIBBON; nor did Mill aim at the peculiar excellencies of these writers. But he aimed at the discovery of pure historic Truth, as earnestly as Gibbon; he had a stronger feeling of Justice, and less regard for the morals of Authority: nor when high occasion called them forth, were his powers to appreciate character and narrate stirring events. ever defective. How ad last work was anonymous the Fragment on mirably and incisively he delineates CLIVE,-the man, to whose audacious, unscrupulous, cruel, but successful coups d' etat, our British empire in India owes its first stability: and we rarely find among descriptive writers, a clearer presentation of rapid and brilliant events in war, than Mill, in his fifth volume, has given of the operations before Seringapatam. It must be recorded, to the high honour of the East India Company, that on the publication of this great History, they secured the services of its Author, and always retained them. Few governments-certainly not the English one -have been politic enough, to evince so large an appreciation of ability, if coupled with obnox-in any form, to TRUTH; and it cannot be denied, ious opinions. From the commencement of his public life to its close, Mill was an English Radical of the broadest stamp; he was the friend and associate of Jeremy Bentham,-he may be termed par excellence, the theorist and philosopher of the Bentham school: and in all he wrote-especially in his memorable systematic treatises, in the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica, there is proof in every line of the presence of a lofty Intellect that could seek Truth for its own sake, and dare to speak it. The subjects of these essays are Government, Education, Jurisprudence, Law of Nations, Liberty of the Press, Colonies, and Prison Discipline. Published afterwards in a separate form, they have had an extensive circulation, and have produced great influence on current political and social speculation. They evince an ability alike in analysis and ratiocination, belonging only to first-rate minds; and their tone and leanings are what might be called ultraliberal. They are of the same class as the Author's celebrated article on the Ballot in the London Review.-Mill's greatest work, in the estimation of many of his admirers, is the Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind; an effort at once original and bold, to give extension to the analytic system of Hartley,-resolving every feeling and idea belonging to the human mind, into simple sensations, and the products of these, as manufactured by the principle of Association.' It is impossible to miss the evidence of Power in every step of this remarkable analysis; although in the view of the writer of this notice, the speculation is based on an imperfect psychology-an imperfect review of the actual characteristics of the beliefs and ideas of which the Analyist takes account. One important fallacy, however, of the opponents of Mill, must be noticed. Although an author traces, or supposes he can trace, many of our moral feelings-gratitude, benevolence, &c.-to simple elements, it does not follow that he disowns either the existence of such feelings, or their high import in practical life. The question at issue, is not a practical, but a theoretical one; and its real bearing is this-Are certain feelings and ideas part of the Mind's primal constitution, and evolved by its own inherent Force; or, is the External Universe so constructed, that Mind cannot come into contact with it-supposing Mind a tabula rasa-without those feelings and ideas arising in it potentially, and conquering sway over its movements?-Mill's MILL, JOHN, a learned divine of the Church of England, author of an edition of the Greek Testament, 1645-1707. MILLAR, JAMES, a Scottish physician and chemist, editor of the fourth edition of the 'Encyclopædia Britannica,' to which he contributed many articles in chemistry and natural philosophy. This industrious writer was also a minister of the Scotch Church. Born at Ayr 1762, died 1827. MILLAR, JOHN, a native of Lanarkshire, was educated at Glasgow. In early life he was tutor in the family of Lord Kames, through whose influence he obtained the professorship of law in the university of Glasgow, which he held for about forty years; he is the author of "The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks,' &c., 1735-1801. MILLER, EDWARD, a doctor of music, chiefly known as composer of the Psalms, which he arranged for every Sunday throughout the year, and for his works on musical theory. He is author also of a History of Doncaster; died 1807.. MILLER, JAMES, a dramatic writer and satirist, author of several political tracts, written against Walpole, the tragedy of Mahomet,' &c., 1703-44. MILLER, JOSEPH, a clever and witty comedian, whose name has acquired a wide reputation as author of a jest-book, presumed to have been written by Mortley. Born 1684, buried in the church-yard of St. Clements, in the Strand, 1738. MILLER, LADY, author of ' Letters' from Italy, died 1781. 9th of December, 1608. His father, a man of good family in Oxfordshire, had been educated at the university, and disinherited for embracing protestantism; on which he became a scrivener, and acquired a competent fortune.-Milton's education was begun under a private tutor of puritanical opinions, and continued from his fifteenth year at St. Paul's School. He has himself related that his love of letters was deeply rooted before he was twelve years old, and was sedulously indulged in spite of headaches and weak eyes: he studied languages, both ancient and modern, delighted especially in poetical reading, and cultivated the musical taste which he inherited from his father.. In 1623 he wrote his translations of the 114th and 136th Psalms. In February 1625, when he MILLER, PHILIP, a celebrated writer on horticulture, author of The Gardeners' Dictionary,' The Gardeners' Kalendar,' 'Introduction to Bo-was a little above sixteen, he was admitted a pentany,' &c., 1691-1771. MILLER, SIR T., a Scotch lawyer, 1717-1789. MILLES, JEREMIAH, a divine and antiquary, publisher of an edition of the poems of Chatterton, for the pretended antiquity of which he was a great advocate, 1714-1784. His uncle, THOMAS MILLES, a learned prelate, author of a life of his father, the Rev. Isaac Milles, rector of High Clear, in Hampshire; died 1740.: MILLINGEN, JAMES, a connoiseur in art, and classical antiquarian and medallist, died 1845. MILLS, CHARLES, son of a physician of Greenwich, au. of several middle age histories, 1788-1825. MILMAN, SIR FRANCIS, physician to George III., au. of some professional works, 1746-1821. MILNE, COLIN, a divine of the Church of England, born at Aberdeen, distinguished as a botanist, died 1815. MILNE, JOSHUA, a famous writer on annuities and assurances, more than thirty years actuary to the Sun Assurance Company, 1773-1851. sioner at Christ's College, Cambridge. In the same year was written his ode On the Death of a Fair Infant;' and in his nineteenth year he produced the verses' At a Vacation Exercise in College.' In the interval were composed several of those elegies, and other poems, which have gained for him the reputation of being.o .one of the best among modern writers of Latin verse. But there is evidence yet more brilliant of the poetic ripeness of his youth. The Ode on the Nativity,' one of the noblest of all his works, and perhaps the finest lyric in the English language, was composed about December 1629, when the poet was twenty-one years old. The particulars of his life at the university are imperfectly known. The tradition of his having been whipped is ill-vouched and improbable; but the fact would not have been irreconcileable with the ideas of academical discipline which were then prevalent. He does appear to have at first excited the displeasure of the authorities, probably for too, free expression of opinions, and certainly for no serious moral offence; but he took his degrees of bachelor and master in the regular course, and was pressed by the fellows of his college to remain at Cambridge. He could not resolve to comply with the wish of his parents that he should enter the church; and he declined also the profession of the law, for which, indeed, he had always a great contempt.-In 1632, leaving the university, he went to the house of his father, who had purchased an estate at Horton in Buckinghamshire. In this retreat he lived from his twenty-fourth year to his twenty-ninth; a period which was not only very important in the development of his mind, but very fertile in the fruits of his genius. He read the Greek and Roman classics, bestowing particular attention on the historians; and, while his study of Spenser and Shakspeare, and their contemporaries, had probably begun in boyhood, MILNER, JOSEPH, best known for his 'His- there is, in his own poems of this stage, much to tory of the Church of Christ,' was born at Leeds, prove that he now became exactly as well as ad1744, and became vicar of Trinity Church at Hull, miringly familiar with Italian poetry. Not long where a monument is erected to his memory; died after his retirement to the country, must have been 1797. His brother, ISAAC, b. 1751, became a dig-produced the verses which he contributed to the nitary of the church, and is au. of many papers in the Philosophical Transactions. He also edited the fourth volume of his brother's history; d. 1820. MILTON, JOHN, was born in London on the MILNER, JOHN, a Roman Catholic divine, famous for his researches in ecclesiastical history and antiquities, and for his zeal and acuteness in theological controversy, was born in London 1752, and commenced his career as a priest at the catholic chapel in Winchester, 1779. In 1803 he was appointed vicar apostolic of the midland district, with the title of bishop of Castabala, and, in 1808, became agent to the Irish hierarchy. He died in 1826. Dr. Milner's works are a 'Dissertation on the Modern Style of Altering Cathedrals,' 'History, Civil and Ecclesiastical, and Survey of the Antiquities of Winchester,' Treatise on the Ecclesiastical Architecture of England during the Middle Ages,' and some others. MILNER, JOHN, one of the nonjuring divines of the Church of England, author of several learned works, 1628-1702. masque of 'Arcades;' his exquisite masque of 'Comus, one of the masterpieces of English poetry, was acted in Ludlow Castle at Michaelmas 1634; and in 1638 was printed the monody of Lycidas,' |