KENNICOTT, Dr Benjamin, well known in the learned world for his elaborate edition of the Hebrew Bible and other valuable publications, was born at Totness, in Devonshire, in the year 1718. His father was the parish clerk of Totness, and once master of a charity school in that town. At an early age young Kennicott succeeded to the same employment in the school, being recommended to it by his remarkable sobriety and premature knowledge. It was in this situation he wrote the verses on the recovery of the honourable Mrs Courtney from a dangerous illness, which recommended him to her notice, and that of many neighbouring gentlemen, who, with laudable generosity, opened a subscription to send him to Oxford. In judging of this performance, they may be supposed to have considered not so much its intrinsic merit, as the circumstances under which it was produced. For although it might justly claim praise as the fruit of youthful industry struggling with obscurity and indigence, yet as a poem it never rises above mediocrity, and generally sinks below it. But, in whatever light these verses may be considered, the publication of them was soon followed by such contributions as procured for the author the advantages of an academical education. In the year 1744 he entered himself at Wadham College; and it was not long before he distinguished himself in that particular branch of study in which he afterwards became so eminent. His two dissertations, on the Tree of Life, and the Oblations of Cain and Abel, came to a second edition as early as the year 1747, and procured him the singular honour of a bachelor's degree conferred upon him gratis by the university a year before the statutable time. The dissertations were gratefully dedicated to those benefactors whose liberality had opened his way to the university, or whose kindness had made it a scene not only of manly labour, but of honourable friendship. With such merit and such support, he proved a successful candidate for a fellowship of Exeter College; and soon after his admission into that society, he distinguished himself by the publication of several occasional sermons. In the year 1753 he laid the foundation of that stupendous monument of learned industry, at which the wise and the good will gaze with admiration, when the cavils of prejudice, and envy, and ingratitude, shall no longer be heard. This he did by publishing his first dissertation, on the state of the printed Hebrew text, in which he proposed to overthrow the then prevailing notion of its absolute integrity. The first blow, indeed, had been struck long before by Capellus, in his Critica Sacra, published after his death by his son, in 1650; a blow which Buxtorf, with all his abilities and dialectical skill, was unable to ward off. But Capellus having no opportunity of consulting manuscripts, though his arguments were supported by the authority of the Samaritan Pentateuch, and that of parallel passages and the ancient versions, could never absolutely prove his point. Indeed the general opinion was that the Hebrew manuscripts contained none, or at least very few and trifling variations from the printed text; and with respect to the Samaritan Pentateuch, the most opposite opinions were entertained. Those who held the Hebrew verity, of course condemned the Samaritan as corrupt in every place where it deviated from the Hebrew; and those who believed the Hebrew to be incorrect, did not think the Samaritan of sufficient authority to correct it. Besides, the Samaritan itself appeared to very great advantage; for as no Samaritan manuscripts were then known, the Pentateuch itself was rashly condemned for errors which ought rather to have been ascribed to the incorrectness of the editions. In this dissertation, therefore, Dr Kennicott proved that there were many Hebrew manuscripts extant, which, though they had hitherto been generally supposed to agree with one another, and with the Hebrew text, yet contained many and important various readings; and that from those various readings considerable authority was derived in support of the ancient versions. He announced the existence of six Samaritan manuscripts in Oxford alone, by which many errors in the printed Samaritan might be removed; and he attempted to prove, that even from the Samaritan, as it was already printed, many passages in the Hebrew might undoubtedly be corrected. This work, as might reasonably be expected, was examined with great severity both at home and abroad. In some foreign universities the belief of the Hebrew verity, on its being attacked by Capellus, had been insisted on as an article of faith. "Ista Capelli sententia adeo non approbata fuit fidei sociis, ut potius Helvetii theologi, et speciatim Genevenses, anno 1678, peculiari canone caverint, ne quis in ditione sua minister ecclesiae recipiatur, nisi fatetur publice textum Hebraicum, ut hodie est in exemplaribus Masoreticis, quoad consonantes et vocales, divinum et authenticum esse." And at home this doctrine of the corrupt state of the Hebrew text was opposed by Comings and Bate, two Hutchinsonians, with as much violence as if the whole truth of revelation had been at stake.

The next three or four years of Dr Kennicott's life were principally employed in searching out and examining Hebrew manuscripts, though he found leisure not only to preach, but also to publish several occasional sermons. About this time Dr Kennicott became one of the king's preachers at Whitehall; and in the year 1759 we find KENNICK, WILLIAM, an author of considerable ability, was the son of a citizen of London, and brought up, it is said, to a mechanical employment. This, however, he seems early to have abandoned, and to have devoted his talents to the cultivation of letters, by which he supported himself during the rest of a life which might be said to have passed in a state of warfare, as he was seldom without an enemy to attack or to defend himself against. He was for some time a student at Leyden, where he received the degree of doctor in both laws. Not long after his return to England, he attracted some notice as a poet by Epistles Philosophical and Moral, 1759; addressed to Lorenzo; an avowed defence of infidelity, written whilst under confinement for debt, and with a declaration that he was "much less ambitious of the character of a poet than of a philosopher." From this period he became a writer by profession; and the Proteus shapes under which he appeared it would be a fruitless attempt to trace. He was for a considerable time a writer in the Monthly Review; but having quarrelled with his principal, he began a new review of his own. When Dr Johnson's edition of Shakspeare first appeared in the year 1765, it was followed in a fortnight by a pamphlet, entitled a Review of Dr Johnson's new Edition of Shakspeare, in which the ignorance or inattention of that editor is exposed, and the poet defended from the persecution of his commentators. This pamphlet was followed by an examination of it, and that by a Defence in 1766, in which year he produced his pleasant comedy of Falstaff's Wedding, at first intended to have been given to the public as an original play of Shakspeare retrieved from obscurity, and which, it must be acknowledged, is a happy imitation of the great dramatic bard. With the celebrated English Roscius Dr Kenrick was at one time on terms of the strictest intimacy; but he took occasion to quarrel with him in print, and in a mode too unmanly to be mentioned. In politics also he made himself not a little conspicuous, particularly in the dispute between his friends Wilkes and Horne. He was the original editor of the Morning Chronicle; but being ousted for neglect, he set up a new one in opposition. He translated in a very able manner the Emile and the Héloïse of Rousseau; the Elements of the History of England by Millot; and produced several dramatic performances, together with an infinite variety of publications both original and translated. To him also the public are indebted for the collection, imperfect as it is, of the poetical works of Robert Lloyd, 1774, in two vols. 8vo.

Dr Kenrick died on the 9th of June 1777.