MR. JOHN EVELYN. 



21 



About this time the University of Oxford received a noble and lasting 

 testimony of Mr. Evelyn's gratitude to the place of his education ; for it 

 was he who prevailed with the Lord Henry Howard to bestow the Arun- 

 delian marbles, then remaining in the garden of Arundel-House in Lon- 

 don, on that University. Lord Howard was also strongly importuned by 

 Mr. Evelyn to send to Oxford an exquisite statue of Minerva ; but the 

 sudden death of that Lord prevented its removal from Arundel-House in 

 the Strand. Mr. Evelyn spent his time at this juncture in a manner as 

 pleasing as he could wish : he had great credit at Court, and great repu- 

 tation in the world ; was one of the commissioners for rebuilding St. 

 Paul's, attended the meetings of the Royal Society with great regularity, 

 and was punctual in the discharge of his office as a commissioner of the 

 sick and wounded. Yet, in the midst of his employments, he found 

 leisure to add fresh labours to those he had already published : As, 18. 

 " The History of the three late famous Impostors, viz. Padre Ottomano, 

 " pretended son and heir to the late Grand Seignior ; Mahomet Bei, a 

 " pretended Prince of the Ottoman family, but in truth a Wallachian 

 " counterfeit ; and Sabbati Levi, the supposed ^Messiah of the Jews, in 

 " the year 1666 ; with a brief account of the ground and occasion of the 

 " present war between the Turk and Venetian : together with the cause 

 " and final extirpation, destruction, and exile of the Jews out of the 

 " Empire of Persia." 1668, 8vo. These little histories abound with 

 curious facts ; many of which, Mr. Evelyn says, he received from the 

 mouth of a Persian stranger of quality, who had lately resided in London. 

 This work was highly commended in the Acta Eruditorum Lipsiensium 

 for the year 1690, with this remarkable circumstance, that the pretended 

 Mahomet Bei was, at that very time, in the city of Leipsic. Sir George 

 Mackenzie, an admired essay-writer of that age, having written " A 

 " Panegyric on Solitude," our Author, by way of Antidote, published a 

 piece, entitled : 19. " Public Employment and an active Life, with all 

 " its Appendages, preferred to Solitude." 1667, 12mo. — 20. "An idea 

 " of the Perfection of Painting, demonstrated from the principles of art, 

 " and by examples conformable to the observations which Pliny and 



Quintilian have made upon the most celebrated Pieces of the ancient 

 " painters, paralleled with some works of the most famous modem 

 " painters, Leonardo de Vinci, Raphael, Julio Romano, and N. Poussin : 

 " written in French by Roland Freart, and now translated." 1668. 

 12mo. D 



