ART. I.- The Life of the Learned and Pious Dr. Henry More, late Fellow of Christ's College, in Cambridge. To which are annexed divers of his useful and excellent Letters. By RICHARD WARD, A. M., Rector of Ingolsby, in Lincolnshire. Lond. 1710. 8vo. pp. 362.
IT has happened to Dr. More, as to many others, to be overpraised by his friends, and most sadly underrated by all out of that limited circle; to please the great public for a time, and then to be forgotten. At this day his writings are known only to the antiquary, or scholar by profession; and yet, in his own age, he stood high among the brilliant ones who, it was thought, would go down to posterity with their garlands on their heads, and their honors continually increasing. For twenty years after the Restoration his writings sold better than any others of that day; but now they are not to be found in the shops of ordinary booksellers, on the tables of general readers, nor even in the libraries of public institutions.* In less than thirty years his collected philosophical writings, making a thick folio, reached four editions, not to mention the Latin translation of all his works in three folios. As a testimony of the esteem in which they were held, a gentleman of the Inner Temple left £380 sterling, to procure a Latin translation of them," that they might do good in foreign parts."
* We have sought in vain for several of them, at Cambridge, Boston, and Andover.
VOL. XXVI. 3D S. VOL. VIII. NO. I.