TRAPP (Dr Joseph), an English divine of excellent parts and learning, was born at Cherington in Gloucestershire, of which place his father was rector in 1579. He was the first person chosen to the professorship of poetry founded at Oxford by Dr Birkhead; and published his lectures under the title of Prælectiones Poeticae, in which he laid down excellent rules for every species of poetry in very elegant Latin. He showed afterwards, however, by his translation of Virgil, that a man may be able to direct who cannot execute, and may have the critic's judgment without the poet's fire. In the early part of his life Dr Trapp is said to have been chaplain to the father of the famous lord Bolingbroke: he obtained the living of Christ-church in Newgate Street, and St Leonard's, Foster-lane, London; and his very high-church principles probably obstructed his farther preferment. He published several occasional poems, a tragedy called Abramulæ, translated Milton's Paradise Lost into Latin verse, and died in 1747.