GALE (Dr Thomas), a learned divine, born at Scruton in Yorkshire, in the year 1636, was educated at Cambridge, and at length became professor of the Greek language in that university. He was afterwards chosen head master of St Paul's school, London; and was employed by the city in writing those elegant inscriptions on the monument erected in memory of the conflagration in 1666. In 1676 he was collated to a prebend in the cathedral of St Paul's; and was likewise elected a fellow of the Royal Society, to which he presented a Roman urn with its ashes. About the year 1697, he gave to the new library of Trinity college, in Cambridge, a great number of Arabic manuscripts; and in 1697, was admitted dean of York. He died in that city, in 1702; and was interred in the cathedral, where a monument, with a Latin inscription, was erected to his memory. He was a learned divine, a great historian, one of the best Greek scholars of his age, and maintained a correspondence with the most
learned men abroad as well as at home. He published, 1. Historie Poeticae Antiqui Scriptores, octavo. 2. Opuscula Mythologica, Ethica, & Physica, in Greek and Latin, octavo. 3. Herodoti Historia, folio. 4. Historiae Britannicae, Saxonicae, Anglo-Danicae, Scriptores quindecim, in folio. 6. Rhetores Selecti, &c.