This, his most valuable work, has been most carefully edited, with numerous additions by Dr. Bliss, and is the great authority for Lives of Oxford men. Its author, born at Oxford in 1632, died there in 1695, having devoted his life strictly to study.—Ed.
Harleian MSS. 7523.
The late Richard Clark, of the Chapel Royal and Westminster Abbey, published in 1823 “An Account of the National Anthem, entitled God save the King,” in which he satisfactorily proves “that Carey neither had, nor could have had, any claim at all to this composition,” which he traces back to the celebrated composer, Dr. John Bull, who he believes composed it for the entertainment given by the Merchant Taylors Company to King James I., in 1607. Ward, in his “Lives of the Gresham Professors,” gives a list of Bull’s compositions, then in the possession of Dr. Pepusch (who arranged the music for the Beggar’s Opera), and Art. 56 is “God save the King.” At the Doctor’s death, his manuscripts, amounting to two cartloads, were scattered or sold for waste-paper, and this was one of the number. Clark ultimately recovered this MS.—Ed.
Dr. Zachary Grey was throughout a long life a busy contributor to literature. The mere list of his productions, in divinity and history, occupy some pages of our biographical dictionaries. He was born 1687, and died at Ampthill, in Bedfordshire, in 1766. In private he was noted for mild and pleasing manners. His “Hudibras,” which was first published in 1744, in two octavo volumes, is now the standard edition.—Ed.
Cole’s MSS.