James, a well-known biographer, who has himself been left without any memorial. The time and place of his birth, and the condition of his parents, are equally unknown. He studied, however, at Christ Church, Oxford, which he probably left without taking a degree; and having entered into holy orders, was presented to the vicarage of Shiplake in Oxfordshire, which appears to have been his only preferment. In the dedication of his Biographical Dictionary, which was published in 1769, he informs us that his name and person were at that time known to few persons, as he had the good fortune to retire early to independence, obscurity, and contentment. In 1772 he published a sermon, entitled An Apology for the Brute Creation, in which he strongly censured cruelty to animals; but which, owing to the mention made in it of horses and dogs, seems to have excited disgust amongst the purists of that time. In 1773 he presented to the public another sermon on the Nature and Extent of Industry, which, notwithstanding a strange dedication, was more favourably received. But his principal work, indeed that by which alone he is now known, is his Biographical History of England, from the time of Egbert the Great to the Revolution, a production of very considerable merit, which occupied him for many years, and of which he lived to see two editions sold. In this work he has only given biographies of those persons of whom some engraved portrait had been executed; and this circumstance, joined to the success which it met with, seems to have had the effect contemplated by the author, namely, to create a taste for collections of portraits. The Biographical History was first published in 1769, in four thin vols. quarto; but the second and subsequent editions have been published in octavo. On the 4th April 1776, whilst at the communion table in the act of administering the sacrament, Granger was seized with an apoplectic fit, and, notwithstanding he had the benefit of immediate medical assistance, died next morning. This affecting circumstance is alluded to in the following verses, written by a friend:

More happy end what saint o'er knew? To whom like mercy shown? His Saviour's death in rapturous view, And unperceived his own.