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bourhood, which, with his curacy (worth 50l. yearly) he says made him "well to live." In July 1748, he took his master's degree, and at the same time withdrew his name from college, having in view a marriage with miss Margaret Mompesson, a Nottinghamshire lady of good family, which he accomplished in August 1750, and whose fortune, in his estimation, made him independent. This lady died April 12, 1790.

In 1746 he published, at Cambridge, a small Latin work entitled "Historia Astronomie, sive de ortu et progressu astronomiæ," 8vo, a juvenile, but ingenious performance, and which seems to have made up for some little, want of mathematical fame when he took his master's degree. On this last occasion he distinguished himself most in the classics, and appears to have little disposition to mathematical and physical attainments. In 1752, while the Middletonian controversy on the Miraculous power, &c. was still raging, although Dr. Middleton himself was dead, he published two pieces, one entitled "Cursory, animadversions upon the Controversy in general;" the other, "Remarks upon a Charge by Dr. Chapman." In 1753 he published A Letter to the rev. Thomas Fothergill, A. M. fellow of Queen's college, Oxford, relating to his Sermon preached before that university, Jan. 30, 1753, upon the reasonableness and uses of commemorating king Charles's Martyrdom," which Mr. Heathcote endeavoured to show was neither reasonable nor useful.

These were published without his name, but his pamphlets on the Middletonian controversy attracted the notice of Dr. Warburton, who discovered the author, and sending him his compliments, offered him the place of assistant preacher at Lincoln's Inn, with the stipend of half a guinea for each sermon. This was little, but he accepted it, as affording him an opportunity of living in London, and cultivating learned society. He accordingly removed to town in June 1753, and became one of a club of literati who met once a week, as he says, "to talk learnedly for three or four hours." The members were Drs. Jortin, Birch, and Maty, Mr. Wetstein, Mr. De Missy, and one

or two more.

On the appearance of lord Bolingbroke's works, he published in 1755, "A Sketch of lord Bolingbroke's philosophy," the object of which was to vindicate the moral attributes of the Deity. In the latter end of the same year,

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came out, The use of Reason asserted in matters of Re ligion, in answer to a Sermon preached by Dr. Patten at Oxford, July 13, 1755," whom he accused of being a Hutchinsonian; and, the year after, a Defence of this against Dr. Patten, who had replied. Dr. Horne also, a friend to Dr. Patten, animadverted on Mr. Heathcote's pamphlet: but it seems not to have been long before all their sentiments concurred; at least, the Hutchinsonians could not blame Mr. Heathcote more than he blamed himself. "When," says he, "the heat of controversy was over, I could not look into them (the pamphlets) myself, without disgust and pain. The spleen of Middleton, and the petulancy of Warburton, had too much infected me." This candid acknowledgment, however, seems to justify Mr. Jones's language in his life of bishop Horne. "A Mr. Heathcote, a very intemperate and unmanly writer, published a pamphlet against Dr. Patten, laying himself open, both in the matter and the manner of it, to the criticisms of Dr. Patten, who will appear to have been greatly his superior as a scholar and a divine, to any candid reader who shall review that controversy. Dr. Patten could not with any propriety be said to have written on the Hutchinsonian plan; but Mr. Heathcote found it convenient to charge him with it, &c." Warburton, too, who had complimented Mr. Heathcote to his face, speaks of him in a letter to Dr. Hurd (in 1757) as one whose "matter is rational, but superficial and thin spread." He adds, "he will prove as great a scribbler as Comber. They are both sensible, and both have reading. The difference is, that the one has so much vivacity as to make him ridiculous; the other so little as to be unentertaining. Comber's excessive vanity may be matched by H.'s pride; which I think is a much worse quality." In this censure the reader may perceive somewhat that will recoil upon the writer, but Heathcote, we see, lived to acknowledge what was amiss, which Warburton did not.

In 1763-4-5, Mr. Heathcote preached the Boylean lectures, twenty-four in number, at St. James's, Westminster, by the appointment of the trustees, archbishop Secker and the duke of Devonshire. He published, however, only two of them, in 1763, on the "Being of a God," which soon passed into a second edition. In 1765, on the death of his father, he succeeded to the vicarage of Sileby, and in 1766 was presented to the rectory of Sawtry-All-Saints, in Huntingdonshire; and in 1768 to a prebend in the col

legiate church of Southwell. "These," he says, "in so short a compass, may look pompous; but their clear an nual income, when curates were paid, and all expences deducted, did not amount to more than 150%." In 1771 he published "The Irenarch, or Justice of the Peace's Manual," a performance which, with some singularities of opinion, was accounted both sensible and seasonable. He was now in the commission of the peace. A second edition of this work appeared in 1774, with a long dedication to lord Mansfield, with a view to oppose the invectives levelled against that illustrious character in a time of po litical turbulence; and in 1781 he published a third edition, to which he gave his name.

In the summer of 1785 he left London, and resided for the remainder of his life principally at Southwell, of which church he became, in 1788, vicar-general. He died May 28, 1795, He left a son, RALPH Heathcote, esq. his majesty's minister plenipotentiary to the elector of Cologne, and to the landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, who died in Germany in 1801.

To the preceding list of Dr. Heathcote's works, we may add that, at the request of Mr. Whiston, he wrote the life of Dr. Thomas Burnet, the learned master of the Charterhouse, prefixed to the edition of his works printed in 1759; and in 1761, on the recommendation of Dr. Jortin, was engaged as one of the writers in the first edition of this Dictionary, and contributed also some articles for the second, printed in 1784. In 1767 he published "A Letter to the hon. Horace Walpole, concerning the dispute between Mr. Hume and Mr. Rousseau," 12mo, which in some of the Reviews was supposed to be by Mr. Walpole himself. He also published an "Assize Sermon," and a pamphlet called "Memoirs of the late contested election for the county of Leicester," 1775. His "Irenarch," and the dedication and notes, he scattered up and down, but with-out alteration, in a miscellaneous work, published in 1786, entitled "Sylva, or the Wood;" an entertaining collection of anecdotes, &c. which was reprinted in 1788; and in 1789, he had begun another volume of miscellanies, including some of his separate pieces, and memoirs of himself, of which last we have availed ourselves in the preceding sketch, from Mr. Nichols's "Literary Anecdotes."1

1 Nichols's Bowyer.-Gent. Mag. LXV. LXVI. LXXI.-Jones's Life of Bp. Horne, first edit. p. 45.-Warburton's Letters to Hurd, 4to, p. 167.

VOL. XVII.

U

HEBENSTREIT (JOHN ERNEST), a celebrated physician and philologer of Leipsic, was born at Neuenhoff in the diocese of Neustadt, in 1702. In 1719, he went to the university of Jena, but, not finding a subsistence there, removed to Leipsic. He passed the greater part of his life in the latter university, and finally died there in 1756. Besides his academical and physiological tracts, he pubJished, in 1739, 1. "Carmen de usu partium," or Physiologia metrica, in 8vo. 2. "De homine sano et ægroto Carmen, sistens Physiologiam, Pathologiam, Hygienen, Therapiam, materiam medicam, cum præfatione de antiqua medicinâ," Leipsic, 1753, 8vo. 3. Oratio de Antiquitatibus Romanis per Africam repertis," 1733, 4to. "Museum Richterianum," &c. Leips. 1743. And, 5. A posthumous work, entitled "Palæologia therapiæ," Halæ, 1779, 8vo. This author had also an elder brother, JOHN CHRISTIAN Hebenstreit, who was a celebrated divine, and profoundly versed in the Hebrew language. Ernesti has published an eulogium of each, in his "Opuscula Oratoria."

4.

HEBER (REGINALD), a learned and amiable English clergyman, the second son of Thomas Heber, esq. of Marton-ball in the deanery of Craven, one of the oldest families in that district of Yorkshire, was born at Marton, Sept. 4, 1728, O. S. He had his school education under the rev. Mr. Wilkinson at Skipton, and the rev. Thomas Hunter at Blackburn, Lancashire, afterwards vicar of Weaverham, Cheshire, author of " Observations on Tacitus," and other works of credit. From Blackburn he removed to the freeschool at Manchester, and on March 4, 1746-7, was entered a commoner of Brazen-nose college; where his elder brother, Richard Heber, was at that time a gentleman commoner. In October 1752, his father died, and his mother in the month of March following. He was admitted to the degree of M. A. July 5, 1753, and chosen fellow of the college November 15 following, having previously in that year been ordained deacon by bishop Trevor, March 18, and priest by bishop Hoadly, Nov. 1, to qualify himself for the fellowship founded in 1538 by William Clifton, subdean of York, for which he was a candidate. He had private pupils when he was only B. A. and was afterwards in much esteem as a public tutor, particularly of gentlemen commoners, having at one time more than twenty of

Dict. Hist.-Rees's Cyclopædia.--Saxii Onomast.-Haller Bibl. Botan

that rank under his care. In July 1766, his brother died, and, as he left no male issue, Mr. Heber succeeded to a considerable estate at Hodnet in Shropshire, which was bequeathed in 1752 to his mother, Elizabeth Heber, by Henrietta, only surviving daughter and heiress of sir Thomas Vernon of Hodnet, bart. who chose for her heir the daughter, in preference to the son, of her niece Elizabeth wife of Richard Atherton, esq. ancestor of Henrietta wife of Thomas lord Lifford. Dec. 5, 1766, he was inducted into the rectory of Chelsea, the presentation to which had, several years before, been purchased for him by his brother and another kind relative. He resigned his fellowship July 1, 1767. Finding the rectorial house at Chelsea bad and unfinished, he in part rebuilt and greatly improved the whole, without asking for dilapidations, as the widow of his predecessor, Sloane Elsmere, D. D. was not left in affluent circumstances. In 1770, he exchanged Chelsea for the Upper Mediety of Malpas, Cheshire, into which he was inducted, July 25, on the presentation of William Drake, esq. of Amersham, Bucks; whose eldest son, the late William Drake, esq. had been one of his pupils in Brazen-nose college. In the long incumbency, and latterly non-residence, of his predecessor, the honourable and rev. Henry Moore, D. D. chaplain to queen Anne, and son of the earl of Drogheda, who was instituted to Malpas, Nov. 26, 1713, the parsonage was become ruinous. Mr. Heber therefore built an excellent new house, on a new site, which commands an extensive view of Flintshire and Denbighshire, and some other counties.

On the death of lord James Beauclerc, who held the rectory of Hodnet in commendam with the bishopric of Hereford, Mr. Heber was instituted to that living, of which he was patron, holding it with Malpas, from which it is distant about fourteen miles. In March 1803, he succeeded to the family estate in Yorkshire by the death of his brother's widow, Mrs. Heber of Weston, Northamptonshire, who held it in jointure. In the summer of that year, retaining still the vigour and faculties of younger days, he was present at a very interesting sight, when his second son, Mr. Reginald Heber, who two years before obtained. the chancellor's prize at Oxford for Latin verse, by his very spirited and, classical " Carmen Sæculare," spoke, with unbounded applause, a second prize poem, the admirable verses on "Palestine," since published.