DOBREE, PETER PAUL, was born in the island of Guernsey in the year 17S2. At an early age ho was sent to Dr. Valpy's school at Reading, and stayed there till ha became en under-graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1800; and took his B.A. degree in 1804. Having been elected a fellow of his college, he continued to reside at Cambridge, devoting himself to classical studies, and enjoying the intimacy of Parson, to whom he was devotedly attached, and from whom ho derived all the spirit of his scholarship. After Poreon's death, the books and manuscripts of that great critic were purchased by Trinity College, and the task of editing part of Poraon's notes was intrusted to Dobrco : ho was prevented however by illness, a subsequent journey to Speia, and other causes, from publishing the portion of these remains assigned to birn till 1820, when he brought out an edition of the Pluto,' and of all that Parson had left upon Aristophneee, along with some learned notes of his own. In 1822 he published Person's transcript of the lexicon of Photius. In the following year ho was elected Regius
professor of Greek. He died on the 24th of September 1825. He was engaged on an edition of Demosthenes at the time of his death : his notes on this and other Greek and Latin authors were collected and published by his successor in 1831. Some of his remarks are very acute, and some of his conjectures most ingenious ; but the greater part of his observations were certainly never intended for the press. As a scholar, Dobree was accurate and fastidious ; he had some taste and much common sense, which preserved him from committing blunders. Ilia unwearying industry supplied him with a vast induction of particular observations, but he was unwilling, perhaps unable, to generalise ; and on the whole it must be allowed that ho has neither done nor shown a power of doing anything to justify the extravagant encomiums of some of his friends.