FULLER, NICHOLAS, was born in 1557 at Southampton ; and was educated first at the Grammar. School of that town, and afterwards at IIart Hall, Oxford. To ripe scholarship in the ordinary learning of the time, he,added the unusual acquirement of a thorough knowledge of Hebrew and its cog-nate lang-uages. His attainments have been commended by many eminent authorities, and his writings, though not voluminous, procured for him the respect of thc learned at home and abroad (comp. Bochart. Hieroz. [ed. Leusden] p. 17, and passim ; Grotius on I,uke ii. 49 ; Poole, Synopsis on Exod. xxix. 13 ; Wood, Athen. Oxon.; Orme, Bibl., etc.) Our author is one instance, out of not a few, which have occurred and do still occur, of high-minded men, who toil on amidst poverty and neglect, sustained by the confidence that the labour which they bestow on a good pur suit, though it fail to requite them beyond the plea sure it inspires, may be not in vain. Fuller, to defray the expenses of his education, was amanu ensis or scribe to Dr. Horne, bishop of Winchester, afterwards he attended, as tutor servant, on Sir Henry Wallop to Oxford ; and returning thence, was made minister of Allington, near Salisbury, where Ile had a benefice rather than a living, so small were the revenues thereof' (Fuller's (Vorthies of England {bY Nuttall], vol. ii. p. 19). It was here that, in the hours Ile could spare from tuition, to which he resorted to supplement the insufficiency of his cleri cal income, he wrote his six books of Miscellanea Sacra, or disquisitions of various extent but of un varying acumen and learning, in which (as Thomas Fuller quaintly, but correctly says of him), 'he was happy in pitching on not difficult trifles, but useful difficulties, tending to the understanding of Scrip ture.' The first three books of this work were pub lished at Heidelberg, Svo, 1612, with a dedication addressed to Sir H. Wallop. The author, who seems to have resorted to a foreign publisher because of his poverty, was sadly disappointed at the miserable manner in which his book was given to the world. A second edition, with the addition of a fourth book and a dedication to bis friend Lake, after wards bishop of Bath and Wells, appeared at Oxford, 1615 ; this was reprinted in London and at Heidelberg in 1648 : two more books were added in the next edition, with a dedication to Bishop Andrews, in whom Fuller had found a Maecenas ; and reprints of this appeared at Leyden, in 1622, and Strasburg, 165o, with the title illiscellanea Theologica in place of .111. Sacra. This change (for
which the author was not responsible) was not a, happy or correct one ; for the work is not theologi cal in its character, though full of sacred subjects. In the one hundred and twenty articles or treatises, of which the entire work consists, the author illus trates and comments on many passag,es and promi nent words of Holy Scripture, involving inquiries of natural history and archolog-y, as well as of sacred criticism and exegesis. Ile seems to have furnished his mind with information derived from many varied sources. The entire Milrc. Sacra is reprinted in the Critici &ere among the dissertations in the Sth volume. Poole has also transferred to the pages of his Synopsis the substance of Fuller's t reatises.
I3esides his learning, which has been often com mended for its accuracy,' there is much good sense, kindly manner, and modesty in Fuller's writings, which he humbly describes as a widow's mite thrown into the treasury as an offering to God, and for the use of the studious.' His modest volume, which was in general so well received, ex cited the jealousy of Drusius, the Belgian critic, who accused him of plagiarism. To this Fuller replied in the Appendix Apolo.getica, subjoined to his Mis cellanea Sacra, which is the very model of a refuta tion. His answer to Drusius is as gentle as it is effective ; firmly vindicating his own character as his dearest possession, but most sorry that it must needs be against the aspersions of a, man whom his labours in the same field had made him so greatly to respect. Bishop Andrewes lost no time in re warding the long neglected but most meritorious scholar who had been thrown in his way ; he gave him the valuable living of Bishop's Waltham in Hampshire—but it was too late. Fuller lived only a year or two to enjoy this with a prebendal stall in the neighbouring cathedral of Salisbury, which had been previously bestowed upon him. He died about the year 1626 (Fuller's 1Vorthi es, ii. 20). In the last of his published writings he ex presses an intention (Mon-fp 171-zrperv 6 0E6s) of completing certain other Opuscula' for the press —these probably are the two MSS. which are said to be still extant in the Bodleian Library (see A. a Wood's Athen. Oxon. by Bliss.)—P. H.