of Coventry till his death, which happened October 22, 1689. He published "A Sinner's Justification by Christ, &c. delivered in several Sermons on Jer. ii. 6, 1670," 8vo; and "Meditations upon our Saviour's Parable of the Prodigal Son, &c. 1678," 4to, both at the request, and for the common benefit, of some of his quondam parishioners.

GREW (NEHEMIAH), the first and most universal vegetable anatomist and physiologist of this country, the son of the preceding, was born at Coventry. The year of his birth is not mentioned, but from some circumstances appears to have been 1628. He was brought up a presbyterian, his father having taken the covenant; and on the change of the national form of religion, at the restoration of Charles II. be was sent to study in some foreign university, where he took his degree of doctor of physic. He settled first at Coventry, and probably resided there in 1664, when, as he informs us in the preface to his Anatomy of Plants, he first directed his thoughts to the subject of that work, 66 upon reading some of the many and curious inventions of learned men, in the bodies of animals. For considering that both of them came at first out of the same hand, and were therefore the contrivances of the same wisdom; I thence," says he, "fully assured myself, that it could not be a vain design to seek it in both.-That so I might put somewhat upon that side the leat which the best botanicks had left bare and empty." Four years afterwards he consulted his brother-in-law, Dr. Henry Sampson, who encouraged him to go on, by pointing out a passage in Glisson's book "De Hepate," chap. 1, in which the anatomy of plants is hinted at as an unexplored, but very promising line of study for a practical observer. For some time he resided at Coventry, but determining to settle in London, he came thither about 1672. Before this his first essay on the anatomy of plants was communicated to the royal society in 1670, by bishop Wilkins, under the title of an "Idea of a Philosophical History of Plants." It was received with the honour and attention it deserved, being ordered to be printed, and its author, in that year also, on the recommendation of the same learned divine, became a fellow of the royal society. He was appointed secretary in 1677, in which capacity he published the Phi

1 Biog. Brit. note in art, Nehemiah Grew.-Calamy.—Miscellaneous Antiquities, in continuation of the Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica, No. I. by Benjamin Bartlett, esq, F. S. A.

losophical Transactions from Jan. 1677-8, to Feb. in the following year. In 1680 he was made an honorary fellow of the college of physicians.-He is said to have attained to considerable practice in his profession, nor did his being a nonconformist deprive him of the credit justly due to his piety and philosophical merit, even in the worst times. He lived indeed to see various changes of opinions and professions, apparently with the tranquillity becoming a philosopher and a good man, and died suddenly, March 25, 1711.

Dr. Grew's Anatomy of Vegetables, of Roots, and of Trunks, originally formed three separate publications in 8vo, but were subsequently collected into a folio volume, and published in 1682, with 83 plates. In this work, truly original, though Malpighi had about the same time, or rather before, pursued the same line of inquiry, scarcely any thing relative to the vegetable anatomy is left untouched. It was the character of Grew to observe every thing, and if a more philosophical observer, more aware of what is best worth remarking, be, in general estimation, a superior character, the latter is more likely to see through the false medium of dazzling theory. The works of Grew are a storehouse of facts, for the use of less original and more indolent authors. They seldom require correction, except where theory is interwoven with observation, and even his theories have passed current till very lately. His chemistry is, of course, that of his time, but his remarks on vegetable secretions, and their multifarious and peculiar properties, abound with ingenuity and originality, as well as his comparative examinations of the various kinds of fruits and seeds. If he had no correct ideas of the propulsion or direction of the sap, we must not forget that he was one of the first who adopted and illustrated the doctrine of the sexes of plants, nor did even the principles of methodical arrangement entirely escape his notice.

This

In 1681 Dr. Grew published a folio volume, entitled "Museum Regalis Societatis," or a catalogue and description of the natural and artificial rarities belonging to the Royal Society, and preserved at Gresham college. is a scientific and descriptive catalogue, with learned references to preceding writers. It is accompanied by "the Comparative Anatomy of Stomachs and Guts begun, being several lectures read before the Royal Society in 1676." Twenty-two plates illustrate the first part of this volume,

and nine the latter, which were given to him by Daniel Colwell, esq. the founder of the collection. The latest publication of our author was "Cosmographia Sacra, or a Discourse of the Universe, as it is the creature and kingdom of God." He was an illustrious proof that it is the fool, and not the philosopher, "who hath said in his heart there is no God." The works of Grew were soon translated into French and Latin, but the latter very incorrectly. His funeral sermon was preached at the meeting in the Old Jewry by the rev. John Shower. It appears by this discourse that Dr. Grew illustrated his learned character by a life of strict piety, humility, and charity.'

GREY (Lady JANE), was an illustrious personage of the blood royal of England by both parents: her grandmother on her father's side, Henry Grey marquis of Dorset, being queen-consort to Edward IV.; and her grandmother on her mother's side, lady Frances Brandon, being daughter to Henry VII. queen-dowager of France, and mother of Mary queen of Scots. Lady Jane was born, 1537, at Bradgate, her father's seat in Leicestershire, and very early gave astonishing proofs of the pregnancy of her parts; insomuch that, upon a comparison with Edward VI. who was partly of the same age, and thought a kind of miracle, the superiority has been given to her in every respect. Her genius appeared in the works of her needle, in the beautiful character in which she wrote; besides which, she played admirably on various instruments of music, and accompanied them with a voice exquisitely sweet in itself, and assisted by all the graces that art could bestow. These, however, were only inferior ornaments in her character; and, as she was far from priding herself upon them, so, through the rigour of her parents in exacting them, they became her grief more than her pleasure.

Her father had himself a tincture of letters, and was a great patron of the learned. He had two chaplains, Harding, and Aylmer afterwards bishop of London, both men of distinguished learning, whom he employed as tutors to his daughter; and under whose instructions she made such a proficiency as amazed them both. Her own language she spoke and wrote with peculiar accuracy: the French, Italian, Latin, and it is said Greek, were as natural to her

1 Biog. Brit.-Ward's Gresham Professors.-Rees's Cyclopædia.-Funera Sermon, by Shower.

as her own. She not only understood them, but spoke and wrote them with the greatest freedom: she was versed likewise in Hebrew, Chaldee, and Arabic, and all this while a mere child. She had also a sedateness of temper, a quickness of apprehension, and a solidity of judgment, that enabled her not only to become the mistress of languages, but of sciences; so that she thought, spoke, and reasoned, upon subjects of the greatest importance, in a manner that surprized all. With these endowments, she had so much mildness, humility, and modesty, that she set no value upon those acquisitions. She was naturally fond of literature, and that fondness was much heightened as well by the severity of her parents in the feminine part of her education, as by the gentleness of her tutor Aylmer in this when mortified and confounded by the unmerited chiding of the former, she returned with double pleasure to the lessons of the latter, and sought in Demosthenes and Plato, who were her favourite authors, the delight that was denied her in all other scenes of life, in which she mingled but little, and seldom with any satisfaction. It is true, her alliance to the crown, as well as the great favour in which the marquis of Dorset her father stood both with Henry VIII. and Edward VI. unavoidably brought her sometimes to court, and she received many marks of Edward's attention; yet she seems to have continued for the most part in the country at Bradgate.

Here she was with her beloved books in 1550, when the famous Roger Ascham called on a visit to the family in August; and all the rest of each sex being engaged in a hunting-party, he went to wait upon lady Jane in her apartment, and found her reading the "Phædon" of Plato in the original Greek. Astonished at it, after the first compliments, he asked her, why she lost such pastime as there needs must be in the park; at which smiling, she answered, "I wist all their sport in the park is but a shadow to that pleasure that I find in Plato. Alas, good folk, they never felt what true pleasure meant.” This naturally leading him to inquire how a lady of her age had attained to such a depth of pleasure both in the Platonic language and philosophy, she made the following very remarkable reply: "I will tell you, and I will tell you a truth, which perchance you will marvel at. One of the greatest benefits which ever God gave me is, that he sent me so sharp and severe parents, and so gentle a schoolmaster. For

when I am in presence either of father or mother, whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go, eat, drink, be merry or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing any thing else, I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened, yea presently sometimes with pinches, rips, and bobs, and other ways (which I will not name, for the honour I bear them), so without measure misordered, that I think myself in hell, till time come that I must go to Mr. Aylmer, who teacheth me so gently, so pleasantly, with such fair allurements to learning, that I think all the time nothing while I am with him; and, when I am called from him I fall on weeping, because whatsoever I do else but learning is full of grief, trouble, fear, and wholly misliking unto me. And thus my book hath been so much my pleasure, and bringeth daily to me more pleasure and more, and that in respect of it all other pleasures in very deed be but trifles and troubles unto me.' What reader is not melted with this speech? What scholar does not envy Ascham's felicity at this interview? He was indeed very deeply affected with it, and to that impression we owe the discovery of some farther particulars concerning this lovely scholar.

At this juncture he was going to London in order to attend sir Richard Morrison on his embassy to the emperor Charles V. and in a letter wrote the December following to Sturmius, the dearest of his friends, having informed him that he had had the honour and happiness of being admitted to converse familiarly with this young lady at court, and that she had written a very elegant letter to him, he proceeds to mention this visit at Bradgate, and his surprise thereon, not without some degree of rapture. Thence he takes occasion to observe, that she both spoke and wrote Greek to admiration; and that she had promised to write him a letter in that language, upon condition that he would send her one first from the emperor's court. But this rapture rose much higher while he was penning a letter addressed to herself the following month. There, speaking of this interview, he assures her, that among all the agreeable varieties which he had met with in his travels abroad, nothing had occurred to raise his admiration like that incident in the preceding summer when he found her, a young maiden by birth so noble, in the absence of her tutor, and in the sumptuous house of her most noble father, at a time too when all the rest of the family, both male and female, were regaling themselves with the plea