ELMSLEY, PETER, was born lu 1779, and educated at West minster and Oxford. In 1793 ho was presented to the ehapelry of Little Ilorkealey, in Essex. By the death of his undo Elmeley, the well-known bookseller, he succeeded to a competent fortune, which enabled him to live in Independence, and devote his whole time to literary pursuits. For some time after his uncle's death he resided In Edinburgh, and was one of the earliest contributors to the Ediu bureh Review.' The articles on 'Wyttenbsch's Plutarch," Schweig Buser's Athetsocue,"Blomfielcts rEschylus,' and Porsou'e Hecuba' are generally understood to have been written by him. While at Edinburgh he euperintended an edition of Herodotus (1804, 0 vole. 12mo), in which he gave the first proof of the love of Atticisma which alwcys distinguished him, by introducing lute the text the Attic forme of the tenses, in spite of all the manuscripts. Ho was also an early contributor to the 'Quarterly Review :' hie paper on Islarkland's Euripides' (in the seventh volume) Is well-known to scholars. As soon as the state of Europe permitted, Elmsley went abroad, and collated manuscripts in the continental libraries. lie spent the whole of the winter of 1818 in the Laurentian library at Florence. In 1819 Elmeley was appointed by the government to assist Sir liumphry Davy in unrolling and deciphering the papyri at Herculaneum ; but the attempt was not attended with success, and in the prosecution of his duties Elmaley caught a fever, from which he never fully recovered.
On his return to Oxford he became Priocipal of St. Alban's Hall, and Camden Professor of Modern History iu that university. lie died of a disease of the heart on the 8th of March 1825. Eltusley's
acknowledged works were editions of Greek plays. He published the Acharnlans of Aristophanes ' in 1809; the ' (Edipus Tyraunns of Sophocies ' in 1811 ; the Illeradeldre, Medea, and Bacchoo of Euripides' in the years 1815, 1818, and 1821; and the ' (Edipus Coloncus of in 1823. His transcript of the 'Florentine Scholia on Sophocleswas published after his death. As a scholar, Elmsley did not pretend to be more than a fullower of Parson, but ho did far moro for Greek scholarship than any Euglish scholar who followed that great critic. His character has been drawn with great truth by the celebrated 0. Hermaun of Leipzig (In the 'Wien. Jahrbiicher,' vol. liv., p. 236) :—" The way laid open by Person was pursued and enlarged by P. Elmaley, a man worthy of all honourable mention as well on account of his sound scholarship, as hie great fairness and earnest love of truth. We owe to his unweariable accuracy and great appli cation a rich treasure of excellent observations on the Attic dialect ; and if he was too fond of making general rules, and for the aake of these rules introducing many wrong and unnecessary emendations, we should remember how easily diligent observation induces one to form a rule, and how easily the adoption of a general rule inclines one to set aside all deviations from it. But Elmsley had too much good sense and too sincere a love of truth not to turn back from his error, and to use it only for a confirmation of the truth and a new advance on the right way : and of this he has given many proofs."