LEE, SAN1UEL, D.D., a distinguished oriental ist and Biblical scholar, was born at Longnor, in Shropshire, May 14, 1783. After receiving the elements of education, he was apprenticed to a car penter, but his native aptitude for learning having been accidentally stimulated by a desire to under stand some Latin quotations and the sight of some Latin books, Ile procured a Latin grammar, and taught himself that lang,uage. He next acquired a knowledge of Greek-, and from that advanced to He brew, Chaldee, Syriac, and Samaritan, all of which he acquired by his own unaided efforts before he was twenty-five years of age. By this dine he had married, and exchanged his former occupation for that of a schoolmaster. Having attracted the notice of Archdeacon Corbett, and Dr. Jon. Scott, Ile was, by their aid, enabled to add to his other acquisitions a knowledge of Arabic, Persic, and. Hindustanee, as well as some European and other tongues. In 1815 he accepted an engagement with the Church Missionary Society, and became a student of Queen's College, Cambridge, where he took his degree of B.A. in /817. At this time he edited portions of the Scriptures, and of the Prayer Book, in several Oriental languages. In 1818 he took orders, and preached at Shrewsbury, still carrying on his Oriental studies ; at this time he is said to have known eighteen languages. In 1819 he became professor of Arabic, and in /834 Regius professor of Hebrew at Cambridge ; besides receiving some pieces of Church preferment, and the title of D.D., first from the University of Halle, and then from that of Cambridge. Shortly before
his death, which took place December 16, 1852, he bad become Rector of Barley, in Somersetshire, where he died. Besides the editions of the Scrip tures which he carried through the press, he pub lished several works bearing on Biblical literature. The most important are, A Grammar of the Hebrew. Langua,ge, comp:lea' fronkthe best authorities, chiefly Oriental, which has passed through several editions ; .4 Lexicon, Hcb., Chald., and Eng., Lond. 184o ; The Book of the Patriarch Yob translated, with in troduction and Commentary, Lond. 1837 ; An In gully into the Nature, Progress, and End of Prophecy, Camb. 1849 ; Prolegomena ill Polygl.
Londinens. Lond. 1828. That Dr. Lee was a great scholar cannot be doubted ; perhatis he was the greatest British orientalist of his day ; and his writings bear evident traces of a vigorous, earnest, and independent mind, loving truth, and boldly pursuing it. But he never wholly surmounted the want of early training, and his works display that deficiency in mental discipline, that lack of sound judgment, and that tendency to confidence and self assertion which are incident to the self-educated and the 60/za84s. His influence would have been greater had his dogmatism and pugnacity been less. —W. L. A.
disciplined and officered like an army. Thus Christ speaks of the legions of angels ' which his Father would readily send to fight for him (Matt.