HERVEY, JAMES, the author of the Meditations among the Tombs, was born in 1714 at Hardingstone, and educated at the grammar school of Northampton, whence in 1731, he passed to Lincoln College, Oxford. At that university he became deeply imbued with the views of the Methodists then struggling into influence and notice; and though he never openly identified himself with their sect, yet the whole tenor of his life was in strict accordance with their views. Entering the English church in 1740 as curate of Biddeford, in Devonshire, he was three years later appointed to succeed his father in the living of Weston Favell in Northampton, to which he afterwards added those of Weston and Collingtree. In this sphere he wrought with the disinterested zeal and fervour of an apostle, sacrificing his health, and finally his life, in the duties of the good cause. He died of consumption brought on by overwork, December 25, 1758. His works, which are numerous, and all on religious subjects, long enjoyed a popularity quite out of proportion to their deserts. His literary merits are very small; and even his Meditations among the Tombs, his best work, is so viciously rhetorical, tasteless and diffuse, that it is matter of wonder how it still finds admirers or even readers. Of his other works may be mentioned his Contemplations on the Night and Starry Heavens; Theron and Aspasio, a Series of Dialogues on the most important Subjects; and his Letters, published in 1811, which illustrate his amiable character and the whole history of his life.