wanted. After wandering many days on the sea, the expedition returned to the Cape de Verde islands, the captain and crew laughing at the undertaking, and saying that it was impossible that there should be any land in those seas. Disgusted with the Portuguese government, and having lost his wife, he sent his brother Bartholomew to England, to solicit the assistance of Henry VII., and in the meantime he went with his son into Spain. In 1484 he arrived at Palos de Moguer, in Andalusia. Having stopped one day at a Franciscan convent, to beg some bread and water for his child, the guardian, or superior, Marchena, entered into conversation with him, and was so struck by the vast extent of his views, that he sent for the physician to discuss them. The result was that Marchena took charge of his son, and gave the father a letter of introduction to the court, which was then at Cordova. The matter was referred to the archbishop of Granada and others supposed to be well versed in geography, who gave the most conflicting opinions, and the proposal was declined. A second attempt, made through the confessor of the queen, was attended with no better success. After seven years spent in attendance on the Spanish court, Columbus at length was on the point of applying to the king of France, from whom he had received a letter of encouragement, when Marchena exerted himself anew in his behalf, and made him acquainted with a distinguished navigator, Alonzo Pinzon, who not only approved of the enterprise, but offered to engage in it with his money and in person. A new application was now made to the queen Isabella. Having heard Columbus, she was much interested; offers were made to him, which he considered beneath the importance of the undertaking, and he was again on the point of finally quitting Spain, when the queen succeeded in overcoming the indifference of the king (Ferdinand), by offering her own jewels to defray the expenses of the expedition; and stipulations were at last signed by Ferdinand and Isabella at Granada, on the 17th of April, 1492.

Having been appointed admiral of the seas and lands which he hoped to discover, Columbus, on the 3d of August, 1492, set sail from the bar of Saltes, near Palos, with three vessels, and ninety men, who were partly pressed into the service. Two of those vessels were caravals, or light barques, no better than our coasting

craft, which, however, he considered as an advantage, to enable him to explore bays and rivers. On his arrival at the Canaries he had scarcely time to refit, when he received an account of a Portuguese expedition having been sent to intercept him; he therefore sailed away in haste on the 6th of September. When out of sight of land the courage of the men began to fail, and the admiral found it necessary to hold out to them the most brilliant prospects of the countries to be discovered. In order to diminish their apprehensions, he pretended that they had sailed only fifteen and not eighteen leagues that day, and he continued the same method, in order that they should not think themselves so far from Spain as they really were. On the 12th of September he discovered the trunk of a large tree floating; but on the 13th, towards night, a circumstance occurred enough to appal the highest order of courage; this was the variation of the needle, when at about 200 leagues west of the island of Ferro. He forbade it to be mentioned to the crew till it was noticed also by his pilots, when he succeeded in allaying their terrors by ascribing it to the movement of the pole star. Continuing still their course steadily to the westward, they frequently met indications of approaching land, as weeds and flights of birds; but, although their expectations were thus kept up, every day added to their discontent at being so far removed from land. It is also to be recollected that, in some of the discussions on the enterprise before the expedition sailed, it had been asserted by high authorities that, as the world was a sphere, sailing to the west would bring them downwards, and that in order to return they would have to ascend, which would be impossible. Accordingly on the 20th of September, when the wind veered to the south-west, the crews were cheered, as it seemed to show a possibility of their return. Discontent, however, progressively increased; and on the evening of the 10th of October there were violent exclamations against the obstinacy of the admiral, and the seamen at length began to talk of throwing him overboard, and of directing their course homeward. Columbus, sometimes by threats, and at other times by encouragements, kept them to their duty. Once a cloud was mistaken for land, and they were desirous that he at least should steer sideways; but he, taking advantage of the wind, steadily continued his course to the west

ward. Once, when on the point of open mutiny, they were restrained by the appearance of a flight of sparrows and other birds. Those manifestations of land soon afforded hope even to the most dejected; and on the 11th a green rush was seen, and a branch of a thorn full of red berries, which seemed to have been newly broken off. After the evening prayer the admiral ordered a careful look-out, and proclaimed a reward to the first who should see land. He himself remained on the high stern of his vessel, and at about ten at night saw a glim mering of light, which disappeared; but at two in the morning the caraval, Pinta, which was ahead, gave the signal of land. All the ships now lay to till daybreak, when they perceived an island, fifteen leagues in length, with a flat surface full of trees, a lake in the middle, and numerous inhabitants. This was Guanahani, or San Salvador, one of the Bahama islands.

The naked and painted natives, when they had recovered from their fright, regarded the white men, by whose confidence they were soon won, as visitors from the skies which bounded their horizon; they received from them with transport toys and trinkets, fragments of glass and earthenware, as celestial presents possessing a supernatural virtue. They brought in exchange cotton yarn and cassava bread. On the 24th of October, Columbus set out in quest of gold and Cipango. After discovering Concepcion, Exuma, and Isla Larga, Cuba broke upon him like an elysium; he no longer doubted that this beautiful land was the real Cipango. When this delusion was over, he fancied Cuba (which, to the time of his death, he supposed to be part of the main land of India), to be not far from Mango and Cathay, so brilliantly depicted in his great oracle, Marco Polo. He next took Hayti, or Santo Domingo, for the ancient Ophir, the source of the riches of Solomon; but he gave it the Latin diminutive of Hispaniola, from its resembling the fairest tracts of Spain. Leaving here the germ of a future colony, he set sail homeward on the 4th of January, 1493. A dreadful storm overtook him on the 12th of February. Fearing the loss of his discovery more than the loss of life, he retired to write two copies of a short account of it. He wrapped them in wax, enclosed them in two separate casks, one of which he threw into the sea, and the other he placed on the poop of his vessel,

that it might float in case she should sink. Happily the storm subsided, but another drove him off the mouth of the Tagus on the 4th of March; and he was obliged to take shelter there. At last he landed triumphantly at Palos, on the 15th of March, 1493. In his journey through Spain he received princely honours all the way to Barcelona, whither the court had gone. His entrance here, with some of the natives, was a triumph as striking and more glorious than that of a conqueror. Ferdinand and Isabella received him seated in state, rose as he approached, raised him as he kneeled to kiss their hands, and ordered him to be seated in their presence. On the 25th of September, 1493, he left Cadiz on a second expedition, with seventeen ships and 1500 men. He discovered the Caribbee Islands, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica; and after repeated mutinies of his colonists, and great hardships, he returned against the trade-winds to Cadiz, June 11, 1496. Having confuted all the calumnies that had been uttered against him, he embarked on the 30th of May, 1498, at San Lucar de Barrameda, on a third expedition, with only six vessels. In this voyage he discovered La Trinidad, the mouths of the Orinoco, the coast of Paria, and the Margarita and Cubagua Islands. On the 14th of August he bore away for Hispaniola, to recruit his shattered health. But fresh calumnies against Columbus induced Ferdinand, in July 1500, to despatch Francisco Bovadilla to supersede him, and bring him back in chains. The officer who had him in charge, and the master of the caraval, would have taken his chains off; but Columbus indignantly refused to have them removed; "I will wear them," said he, "till the king orders otherwise, and will preserve them as memorials of his gratitude." He hung them up in his cabinet, and requested they should be buried in his grave. The general burst of indignation at Cadiz, which was echoed throughout Spain, on the arrival of Columbus in fetters, compelled Ferdinand himself to disclaim all knowledge of the transaction. But still the king kept Columbus in attendance for nine months, wasting his time in fruitless solicitations for redress; and at last appointed Nicholas Ovando governor of Hispaniola in his place. With a spirit undepressed by persecution, but with a frame wasted by over-exertion and sickness, Columbus sailed from Cadiz again on the 9th of May, 1502, with four caravals and 150 men, in search of a

passage to the East Indies near the Isthmus of Darien. Being denied relief, and even shelter, at Santo Domingo, he was swept away by the currents to the N. W.; he, however, at last reached Truxillo, whence he coasted Honduras, the Mosquito shore, Costa Rica, Veragua, as far as the point which he called El Retrete. But here, on the 5th of December, he yielded to the clamours of his crews to return in search of gold to Veragua, a country which he himself mistook for the Aurea Chersonesus of the

ancients. Finally, the fierce resistance of the natives and the crazy state of his ships forced him, at the close of April 1503, to make the best of his way for Hispaniola with only two crowded wrecks, which came, on the 24th of June, to anchor at Jamaica. After famine and despair had occasioned a series of mutinies and disasters far greater than any that he had yet experienced, he at last arrived, on the 13th of August, at Santo Domingo. Sailing homewards on the 12th of September, he anchored at San Lucar, on the 7th of November, 1504. From San Lucar he proceeded to Seville, where he soon after received the news of the death of his patroness Isabella. He was detained by illness till the spring of 1505, when he arrived, wearied and exhausted, at Segovia, to have only another courtly denial of redress, and to linger a year longer in neglect, poverty, and pain, till death gave him relief, at Valladolid, on the 20th of May, 1506. His remains were honoured with solemn funeral rites, and upon his tomb was inscribed this inscription

:

"A Castilla y a Leon

Nuevo mundo dio Colon."

COLUMBUS, (Don Bartholomew,) elder brother of the preceding, whose tutor he had been in cosmography, acquired a reputation by the construction of sea-charts and spheres. He had a share in the bounty bestowed on his brother by the king of Castile. He underwent with Christopher the fatigues and dangers of the deep, and built the town of St. Domingo. He died in 1514.

COLUMELLA, (Lucius Junius Moderatus,) a native of Cadiz, who lived at Rome in the time of the emperor Claudius. He wrote a celebrated work on agriculture, entitled De Re Rustica, in twelve books, which are come down to our times, and are the most valuable relic of antiquity on that subject. Pliny attributes to him a work on ancient sacrifices for obtaining the fruits of the earth; but

this is lost. His extant writings have been published in Gesner's collection of the Rei Rusticæ Scriptores, Leips. 1735.

COLUMNA, (Guy,) was a native of Messina, who followed Edward I. into England, on his return from the Holy Land. About 1287 he compiled a chronicle of 36 books, and wrote several historical tracts in relation to England. His most curious work is, The History of the Siege of Troy, in Latin, Cologne, 1477, 4to; and Strasburg, 1486, fol.

COLUTHUS, a Greek poet, a native of Lycopolis, a city of Thebais, in Upper Egypt, who lived, according to Suidas, in the reign of Anastasius, who succeeded Zeno in the government of the Eastern empire, about the year 491. He wrote Caledonics, Persics, and Encomia; but none of his works now remain, except an imperfect one, entitled The Rape of Helen; the first edition of which is that of Aldus, 8vo, without a date, along with Quintus Calaber. There are English translations of this poem by Sherborne and Fawkes.

COLVIUS, (Andrew,) a Protestant divine, born at Dort, in 1594. After having officiated as minister in different Walloon churches in the United Provinces, he was appointed pastor of the Walloon church in his native city. In 1620 he went, in the capacity of chaplain to the ambassador, to Venice, where he cultivated an acquaintance with the celebrated father Paul, whose treatise on the Inquisition he translated from the Italian into the Latin language. This translation was printed at Rotterdam in 1651. He likewise made considerable progress in astronomical and philosophical knowledge, and was a good poet. He was also an industrious and curious collector of rarities of every description; and printed, in 1655, Catalogus Musæi Andreæ Colvii. He died in 1671.-NICHOLAS COLVIUS, son of the preceding, was born at Dort, in 1634, and became colleague with his father in the Walloon church in that place, in 1655. He afterwards exercised his ministerial functions at Amsterdam for fifty-five years. He died in 1717.

COLWILL, (Alexander,) was born near St. Andrew's, and educated at Edinburgh, of which he became principal in 1662. Besides some tracts, he wrote the Scotch Hudibras, after the manner of Butler, a ludicrous poem, which severely ridiculed the Presbyterians, and which is still admired in Scotland. He died at Edinburgh in 1676.

COMBALUSIER, (François de Paule,)

a French physician, born at St. Andeol in 1713. He obtained his medical degree at Montpellier, when only seventeen years of age, and became a professor at the university of Valence. In 1750 he went to Paris, where he was not admitted into the faculty of medicine till after a severe contest, in consequence of his not being possessed of some of the required qualifications. He was afterwards appointed professor of pharmacy, and became famous as a lecturer both in Latin and French. He also took a distinguished part in the controversy between the physicians and surgeons. He died in 1762. COMBE, (Charles,) an eminent classical scholar and physician, born in London in 1743. His father, an apothecary in Bloomsbury, designed him for the medical profession, and sent him to Harrow school, where he had for his contemporaries Sir William Jones and Dr. Parr. On leaving Harrow, he returned to his father's house, and under the paternal roof applied himself both to the study and practice of medicine. In 1768, when he was only twenty-five years of age, he, in consequence of the demise of his father, succeeded to his practice. In 1771 he became a member of the Society of Antiquaries; and in 1776 was nominated a fellow of the Royal Society. In 1783 he obtained his degree at the university of Glasgow; and became, first, physician in ordinary, and then physician extraordinary, to the British Lying-inhospital, in Brownlow-street. He now turned his attention to the study of ancient medals, as connected with ancient manners and ancient history, and formed a noble collection of Greek and Roman medals and coins. Long after, in concert with the Rev. Henry Homer, of Emmanuel college, Cambridge, he published an edition of Horace, with notes. It was published in 1793, and was dedieated to lord Mansfield. This work was severely handled by Dr. Parr in the British Critic. Dr. Combe died in 1817. COMBE, (Taylor,) son of the preceding, director of the Society of Antiquaries, and keeper of the antiquities and coins at the British Museum, was born in 1774. He was educated at Harrow school, whence he was removed to Oriel college, Oxford. He succeeded to an appointment in the British Museum in 1803, upon the death of the Rev. Richard Penneck, when he had the especial charge delivered to him of the cabinet of coins; and, in 1807, was placed at the head of the new department of antiquities. He

showed an early partiality for the investigation of classical antiquities, and had a profound and accurate knowledge of the Greek and Roman, as well as British and Saxon coins. Thirty-three of the plates of Ruding's Annals of Coinage, containing the British and Anglo-Saxon coins, were engraved under his direction. Upon the completion of the building, and final arrangement of the terra cottas and marbles of the Townley Gallery, the trustees of the British Museum employed him to describe the stores with which that collection had enriched them. Accordingly, in 1811, his Description of the Terra Cottas was published, with engravings. In 1812 appeared, Part I. of his Description of the Collection of Ancient Marbles; in 1815, Part II.; in 1818, Part III.; and in 1820, Part IV.; the last part exclusively confined to the description of the sculptures which adorned the temple of Apollo Epicurius, on Mount Cotylion, near the ancient city of Phigalia, in Arcadia. He also published a catalogue of the Greek coins in the Museum, entitled, Veterum Populorum et Regum Nummi qui in Museo Britannico adservantur, 4to, Lond. 1814. He died in 1826.

COMBEFIS, (Francis,) a learned Dominican, born in 1605 at Marmande. He published the works of St. Amphilochus, St. Methodius, St. Andrew of Crete, and several Opuscula of the Greek Fathers, and an addition to the library of the Fathers, 3 vols, fol. Gr. and Lat. He also contributed to the edition of the Byzantine history, Historiæ Bizant. Script. post Theophanem, 1685, fol.; and there is a library of the Fathers by him, 1662, 8 vols, fol. He died in 1679.

COMBER, (Thomas,) an able divine, was born in Sussex, in 1575; admitted scholar of Trinity college in 1593; chosen fellow of the same in 1597; preferred to the deanery of Carlisle in 1630; and sworn in master of Trinity college in 1631. In 1642 he was imprisoned, and deprived of all his preferments. He was a man of very extensive learning, particularly in the classical and oriental languages; and Neal, in his History of the Puritans, bears testimony to the excellence of his character in this and other respects. He died in 1653.

COMBER, (Thomas,) a learned, pious, and eloquent divine, born at Westerham, in Kent, March 19, 1644. His father was so persecuted for his loyalty, as to be compelled to take refuge in Flanders, leaving young Comber entirely under the

care of his mother. He received his earlier education at the school of his native place, where his progress was so rapid that he could read and write Greek before he was ten years old. Thence he removed, in 1653, to London, and passed some time under a schoolmaster, a distant relation; and in 1656 he returned to his first master at Westerham. In 1659 he was admitted of Sidney-Sussex college, Cambridge, where he was placed under the care of the Rev. Edmund Matthews, B.D., senior fellow and president of the college, to whom he acknowledges his obligations for the pains he took in instructing him in science and in the languages. In 1662 he was chosen scholar of the house. Having been admitted to the degree of A.B. in 1662, he was obliged, by the narrowness of his circumstances, to leave the university, and retire to his mother's house. In this situation, however, he was befriended by a Mr. John Holney, of Eden-bridge, who, discerning his talents, made him a handsome present, and signified to him his wish that he would draw upon him at any time for any sum he might require.

Early in 1663 he accepted an invitation to the house of the Rev. William Holland, rector of Allhallows Staining, London, whose assistant he became. Soon after he was invited to be curate to the Rev. Gilbert Bennet, who held the living of Stonegrave, in Yorkshire. At Stonegrave, his character having recommended him to the notice of Mr. Thornton, of East Newton, he was invited to reside at that gentleman's house, and he afterwards married one of his daughters. In 1669 Mr. Bennet resigned to him the living of Stonegrave, as he had promised to do when he engaged him as his curate. Having long been an admirer of the church-service, he determined to recommend it to the public, which at that time was frequently interested in disputes respecting set forms and extempore prayer; and with this view he published, about 1672, the first part of his Companion to the Temple; in 1674 the second part; and in 1675, the third part, of which a different arrangement was adopted in the subsequent editions. In 1677 he was installed prebend of Holme, in the metropolitan church of York; and the same year a third edition of his Companion to the Temple was published, together with a new edition of a very useful tract, entitled, Advice to the Roman Catholics, and his first book of The Right of Tithes,

&c., against Elwood, the Quaker. The same year appeared his Brief Discourse on the Offices of Baptism, Catechism, and Confirmation, dedicated to Dr. Tillotson. In 1678 he was presented to the living of Thornton, by Sir Hugh Cholmeley. In 1680 he published, in answer to Selden's History of Tithes, the first part of his Historical Vindication of the Divine Right of Tithes, and in 1681 the second part. Some time in this year he published a tract, entitled, Religion and Loyalty, intended to convince the duke of York that no person in succession to the throne of England ought to embrace popery; and to persuade the people of England not to alter the succession. In 1683 he was made precentor of York, and boldly denounced those imprudent and arbitrary measures, which at length roused that national spirit which drove James II. from his throne. And when the prince and princess of Orange had been called to the throne, Comber vindicated the legality of the new government. His exertions were rewarded by his promotion, in 1691, to the deanery of Durham. He would, probably, have been at length advanced to the episcopal dignity, had not a consumption terminated his life in 1699, before he had completed his fifty-fifth year. Besides the works already noticed, Dr. Comber wrote,-1. A Scholastical History of the primitive and general Use of Liturgies in the Christian Church; together with an Answer to Mr. David Clarkson's late Discourse concerning Liturgies, Lond. 1690, dedicated to king William and queen Mary. 2. A Companion to the Altar; or, an Help to the worthy receiving of the Lord's Supper, by Discourses and Meditations upon the whole Communion-office. 3. A brief Discourse upon the Offices of Baptism, Catechism, and Confirmation, printed at the end of the Companion to the Altar. 4. A Discourse on the Occasional Offices in the Common Prayer, viz. Matrimony, Visitation of the Sick, Burial of the Dead, Churching of Women, and the Commination. 5. A Discourse upon the Manner and Form of making Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, London, 1699, 8vo, dedicated to archbishop Tenison. 6. Short Discourses upon the whole Common Prayer, designed to inform the judgment, and excite the devotion of such as daily use the same, chiefly by way of paraphrase, London, 1684, 8vo, dedicated to Anne, princess of Denmark, to whom the author was chaplain. 7. Roman Forge