BLAYNEY, BENJAMIN, D.D., regius professor of Hebrew at Oxford, and rector of Polshot. He was educated at Oxford; was installed to the for mer of these offices in 1787; and died 20th Septem ber IS01. As a Hebrew scholar and critic Blayney had few equals in his day. He took special pains in correcting the text of the English version of the Bible, printed in 1769, 4to, and which has been followed since as the standard. The marginal references were also greatly improved by him. Unfortunately, a large number of the impression was destroyed by fire, and copies of the book are now very scarce. His other works, and by which he is now best known, are the following :—r. yeremiahand Lamentations: a new translation, wit!: notes, criti cal, philological, and explanatory; first published in 1784, 4t0; the third and best edition, London, 1836, Svo. This work was intended as a continua tion of Bishop Lowth's on Isaiah, and though per haps not less able as a work of sacred criticism, it yet falls considerably short of its eminent prede cessor in the matter of taste and acute poetical dis cernment. Considered by itself, however, it is a valuable commentary. The student will observe, in consulting it, that Blayney, in his arrangement of several parts of Jeremiah, differs considerably from the printed Hebrew text. If the notes are
not always clear and satisfactory, they yet shew, as Orme remarks, that he had studied the sub ject profoundly, and with all the aids usually em ployed in critical investigation. 2. Zechariah: a new translation, with notes, critical, philological, and explanatory; and an Appendix in reply to Dr. .Eveleigh's Sermon on Zech. ii. 8-11. To which is added (a new edition, with alterations), a disser tation on Daniel ix. 20-27; 4t0, Oxford, 1797. The observations made on the preceding commen tary apply equally to this. The most valuable of its notes will be found inserted in the edition of the Minor Prophets, by Newcome, published by Boothroyd in 1809. The dissertation added bears also, as part of its title, an inquiry into the import and application of Daniel's vision, usually called Daniel's Prophecy of the Seventy Weeks. Through out will be found occasional remarks on Michaelis's letter on the same subject. Besides these works, and some smaller pamphlets and single sermons of a critical nature, Dr. Blayney published, in 1790, an edition of the Pentateuchus Hebrao-Sanzaritanus, in Hebrew letters, with various readings, Svo. W. J. C.