building the hospital near St. Thomas's which bears his name. The charge of erecting this vast pile amounted to 18,7937. besides 219,4997. which he left to endow it: and he just lived to see it roofed in. He erected an almshouse, with a library, at Tamworth, in Staffordshire (the place of his mother's nativity, and which he represented in parliament), for fourteen poor men and women; and for their pensions, as well as for the putting out of poor children apprentices, bequeathed 125l. a year. To Christ's hospital he gave 400l. a year for ever; and the residue of his estate, amounting to about 80,000l. among those who could prove themselves in any degree related to him.

He died December 17, 1724, in the eighty-first year of his age, after having dedicated to charitable purposes more money than any one private man upon record in this kingdom.

GUYET (FRANCIS), an eminent critic, was born of a good family at Angers, in 1575. He lost his father and mother when a child; and the small estate they left him was wasted by the imprudence of his guardians. He applied himself, however, intensely to books; and, with a view to improve himself by the conversation of learned men, he took a journey to Paris in 1599. The acquaintance he formed with the sons of Claudius du Puy proved very advantageous to him; for, the most learned persons in Paris frequently visited these brothers, and many of them met every day in the house of Thuanus, where Mess. du Puy received company. After the death of that president, they held those conferences in the same place; and Guyet constantly made one. He went to Rome in 1608, and applied himself to the Italian tongue with such success as to be able to write Italian verses. He was much esteemed by cardinal du Perron and several great personages. He returned to Paris by the way of Germany, and was taken into the house of the duke d'Epernon, to teach the abbot de Granselve, who was made cardinal de la Valette in 1621. His noble pupil, who conceived so great an esteem for him as always to entrust him with his most important affairs, took him to Rome, and procured him a good benefice; but Guyet, after his return to Paris, chose to live a private life rather than in the house of the cardinal, and resided in Burgundy college. Here he spent the remainder of his life, employed in his studies; and wrote a dissertation, in

1 Noorthouck's Hist. of London.-Nichols's Bowyer.

which he pretended to shew that the Latin tongue was derived from the Greek, and that all the primitive words of the latter consisted only of one syllable; but of this they found, after his death, only a vast compilation of Greek and Latin words, without any order or coherence, and without any preface to explain his project. But the reading of the ancient authors was his favourite employment, and the margins of his classics were full of notes, many of which have been published. Those upon Hesiod were imparted to Grævius, who inserted them in his edition of that author, 1667. The most complete collection found among his papers was his notes upon Terence; and therefore they were sent to Boeclerus, and afterwards printed. He took great liberties as a critic: for he rejected as supposititious all such verses as seemed to him not to savour of the author's genius. Thus he struck out many verses of Virgil; discarded the first ode in Horace; and would not admit the secret history of Procopius. Notwithstanding the boldness of his criticisms, and his free manner of speaking in conversation, he was afraid of the public; and dreaded Salmasius in particular, who threatened to write a book against him if he published his thoughts about some passages in ancient authors. He was generally accounted a man of great learning, and is said to have been a sincere and bonest man. He was cut for the stone in 1636; excepting which, his long life was hardly attended with any illness. He died of a catarrh, after three days illness, in the arms of James du Puy, and Menage his countryman, April 12, 1655, aged eighty. His life is written in Latin, with great judgment and politeness, by Mr. Portner, a senator of Ratisbon, who took the supposititious name of Antonius Periander Rhætus; and is prefixed to his notes upon Terence, printed with those of Boeclerus, at Strasburg, in 1657, an edition in no great estimation.

1

GUYON (JOANNA MARY BOUVIERES DE LA MOTHE), a French lady of fashion, remarkable for simplicity of heart, and regularity of manners, but of an enthusiastic and unsettled temper, was descended of a noble family, and born at Montargis, April 13, 1648. At the age of seven she was sent to the convent of the Ursulines, where one of her sisters by half-blood took care of her. She had afforded proofs of an enthusiastic species of devotion from her

1 Gen. Dict.-Moreri.-Saxii Onomast,

earliest infancy, and had made so great a progress in what her biographers call "the spiritual course" at eight years of age, as surprized the confessor of the queen mother of England, widow of Charles I. who presented her to that princess, by whom she would have been retained, had not her parents opposed it, and sent her back to the Ursulines. She wished then to take the habit; but they having promised her to a gentleman in the country, obliged her to marry him. At twenty-eight years of age she became a widow, being left with two infant sons and a daughter, of whom she was constituted guardian; and their education, with the management of her fortune, became her only employment. She had put her domestic affairs into such order, as shewed an uncommon capacity; when of a sudden she was struck with an impulse to abandon every worldly care, and give herself up to serious meditation, in which she thought the whole of religion was comprised.

In this disposition of mind she went first to Paris, where she became acquainted with M. d'Aranthon, bishop of Geneva, who persuaded her to go to his diocese, in order to perfect an establishment he had founded at Gex, for the reception of newly-converted catholics. She accordingly went in 1681, and took her daughter with her. Some time afterwards, her parents desired her to resign the guardianship of her children to them, and all her fortune, which was 40,000 livres a-year. She readily complied with their request, reserving only a moderate pension for her own subsistence. On this the new community desired their bishop to request her to bestow this remainder upon their house, and become herself the superior; but she refused to comply with the proposal, not approving their regulations; at which the bishop and his community took such offence, that he desired her to leave the house.

She then retired to the Ursulines at Thonon, and from thence to Turin, Grenoble, and at last to Verceil, by the invitation of that bishop, who had a great veneration for her piety. At length, after an absence of five years, her ill state of health made her return to Paris, in 1686, to have the best advice. During her perambulations abroad, she composed the "Moyen court et très facile de faire Oraison ;" and another piece, entitled "Le Cantique de Cantiques de Salomon interprete, selon le sens mystique," which were printed at Lyons, with a licence of approbation; but as her irreproachable conduct and extraordinary

virtues inade many converts to her system, which was called Quietism, she was confined, by an order from the king, in the convent des Filles de la Visitation, in 1688. Here she was strictly examined for the space of eight months, by order of M. Harlai, archbishop of Paris; but this served only to establish her innocence and virtue; and madame Miranion, the superior of the convent, representing the injustice of her detention to madame Maintenon, the latter pleaded her cause so effectually to the king, that she obtained her discharge, and afterwards conceived a particular affection and esteem for her.

Not long after her deliverance, she was introduced to Fenelon, afterwards archbishop of Cambray, who became her disciple. She had besides acquaintance with the dukes de Chevreuse and Beauvilliers, and several other distinguished persons, who, however, could not protect her from the ecclesiastics, who made violent outcries on the danger of the church from her sect. In this exigence, she was persuaded to put her writings into the hands of the celebrated Bossuet, bishop of Meaux, and submit them to hist judgment; who, after reading all her papers, both printed and MSS. including a life she had written of herself, had a conference with her, and was well satisfied with her principles; but her enemies among the churchmen being not equally satisfied, an order passed for the re-examination of her two books already mentioned. Bossuet was at the

head of this examination, to whom the bishop of Chalons, afterwards cardinal de Noailles, was joined, at the request of madame Guyon; and to these two were added, M. Tronson, superior of the society of St. Sulpice, and Fenelon. During the examination, madame Guyon retired to a convent at Meaux, by the desire of Bossuet, who at the end of six months drew up thirty articles, sufficient as he thought to set the sound maxims of a spiritual and mystic life in a proper light, to which four more were added by way of qualification by M. Fenelon, and the whole were signed at Issy near Paris, by all the examiners, March 10, 1695. Madame Guyon having signed them by the advice of Bossuet, he prevailed with her likewise to subscribe a submission, in which, among other things, she said, “I declare nevertheless, without any prejudice to the present submission, that I never had any design to advance any thing that is contrary to the mind of the catholic apostolic Roman church, to which I have always been, and shall

always continue, by the help of God, to be submissive even to the last breath of my life; which I do not say by way of excuse, but from a sense of my obligation to declare my sentiments in simplicity. I never held any of those errors which are mentioned in the pastoral letter of M. de Meaux; having always intended to write in a true catholic sense, and not then apprehending that any other sense could be put upon my words." To this the bishop subjoined an attestation, dated July 16, 1695, signifying that "madam Guyon having lived in the house, by the order and permission of their bishop, for the space of six months, had never given the least trouble or pain, but great edification; that in her whole conduct, and all her words, there appeared strict regularity, simplicity, sincerity, humility, mortification, sweetness, and Christian patience, joined to a true devotion and esteem for all matters of faith, especially for the mystery of the incarnation, and the holy infancy of our Lord Jesus Christ; and that, if the said lady would choose to pass the rest of her life in their house, the community would esteem it a favour and happiness, &c." In consequence of these submissions, and of this testimony, Bossuet declared himself satisfied with her conduct, and continued her in the participation of the holy sacrament, in which he found her; and added that he had not discovered her to be any wise involved in the abominations, as he was pleased to term them, of Molina (see MOLINA), or others elsewhere condemned; and that he never intended to comprehend her in what he had said of those abominations in his ordonnance of April 15th preceding.

Thus acquitted she returned to Paris, not thinking of any further prosecution; but all these attestations and submissions were not sufficient to allay the storm, and she soon found herself involved in the prosecution or rather persecution of the archbishop of Cambray. This amiable prelate, when Bossuet desired his approbation of the book he had composed, in answer to madame Guyon's sentiments, not only refused it, but openly declared that this pious woman had been treated with great partiality and injustice, and that the censures of her adversary were unmerited and groundless. Fenelon also, in the same year, published a book, in which he adopted several of the tenets of madame Guyon, and especially that favourite doctrine of the mystics, which teaches that the love of the Supreme Being must be pure and disinterested, that is, exempt from