HOLMES, ROBERT, D.D., a learned divine and elegant scholar, was a native of Hampshire, born 1749, and educated at Winchester School, from which he was chosen to New College, Oxford. In 1790 lie succeeded Thomas Warton as professor of poetry in that University. He became rector of Staunton, canon of Salisbury, canon of Christ Church, and in 1804 dean of Winchester. He died in 1805 at Oxford. In addition to the great work on which his reputation depends, he pub lished in 1777 in quarto a very ingenious discourse, entitled The resurrection of the body deduced from the resurrection of Christ ;' the year after, Alfred, an Ode,' etc., in imitation of Gray's style ; in 1783 the Bampton Lectures, On the prophe cies and testimony of John the Baptist, and the parallel prophecies of Jesus Christ ;' in r7SS four tracts on the principles of religion as a test of divine authority ; on the principles of redemption ; on the angelical message of the Virgin Mary, and on the resurrection of the body, with a discourse on humility. In 1793 he composed an ode for the Encaenia at the installation of the Duke of Port land as Chancellor of the University of Oxford. In the same year he published, what was in fact the precursor of his great critical work, a Latin letter to Shute Barrington, Bishop of Durham, on his collation of the Septuagint, with a specimen of the text and various readings which he was on the point of publishing. As early as 1788 he had pun lished at Oxford proposals for a collation of all the known MSS. of the Septuagint—a labour which had never yet been undertaken on an extensive scale, and the want of which had long been felt among Biblical scholars. Dr. Holmes' undertak ing was promoted by the delegates of the Claren don Tress, to the liberality of which body sacred literature owes much, for besides the present in stance, Grabe's edition of the Septuagint in four folio volumes, and Dr. Mill's critical Greek Testa ment, emanated from the press of this University, at different periods in the last century. In addition to the learned editor's own labours, literary men were engaged in different parts of the continent for the business of collation, and Dr. Holmes an nually published an account of the progress which was made. In 1798 he published at Oxford the Book of Genesis, which was successively followed by the other books of the Pentateuch, making to gether one folio volume, with one title page and one general preface. From this preface it appears
that Greek MSS. in uncial letters, and more than ioo MSS. in cursive writing (containing either the whole or parts of the Pentateuch) were collated for this edition. The text of this edition being a copy of the Roman edition of 1537 [that of Sixtus V.], the deviations from it which occur in three other cardinal editions (the Complutensian, the Aldine, and Grabe's) are constantly noted. The quotations found in the works of the Greek Fathers are likewise alleged, and finally the various readings of the ancient versions which were made from the Septuagint. The plan of this edition thus bore a close resemblance to what had been already applied by Mill, Wetstein, and Griesbach to the criticism of the Greek Testament, and the execu tion of it has been highly commended as displaying uncommon industry and apparently great accuracy-. The learned editor died in the midst of his honour able labour in the year 1306 ; but shortly before his death lie published the book of Daniel, both according to the LXX. version and that of Theo dotion, the latter only having been printed in for mer editions because the Septuagint translation of this book is not contained in the common MSS., and was unknown till it was printed in 1772 from a MS. belonging to Cardinal Chigi. After Dr. Holmes' death the work was continued by the Rev. J. Parsons, B.D., and eventually completed, on the original editor's plan, in five splendid folio volumes, in the year 1327. For favourable notices of this elaborate work the reader is referred to Bishop Marsh's Lectures on the Criticism of the Bible [Lecture x.], where Dr. Holmes' portion is described, and Horne's introduction [ed. 9], vol. v. pp. 57, 53, where sundry Reviews of the earlier volumes as they appeared are also mentioned. The high opinion, however, which the partiality of con temporary critics induced them to form of this handsome and expensive edition of the Septuagint has not been always endorsed since—Tischendorf, one of the most recent editors of the Alexandrian Version, complains bitterly of the carelessness and inaccumcy of the work—` tam negligenter tamque male factm sunt [collationes] ut etiam atque etiam dolendum sit tantos numos raro liberalitate per Angliam suppeditatos criticm sacr parum profu isse. (For his entire review and strictures the reader is referred to his edition of the Sept. [r856], Prolegomena, pp. 11 -lvi.)—P. H.