Joseph Dacre, a celebrated orientalist, was born in 1759 at Carlisle, where his father was a physician. Having completed his education at the grammar-school, he went to Cambridge, where he took a master's degree, and was elected a fellow of Queen's College. During his stay at college, with the assistance of a native of Baghdad then resident at Cambridge, he had attained great proficiency in Arabic literature; and after succeeding Dr Paley in the chancellorship of Carlisle, he was appointed in 1794 professor of Arabic in the University of Cambridge. Two years before his appointment he published his translation of the History of Egypt, written by Maurod Allatafet Jemalieddin, known in the east as the historiographer of Egypt; and two years after his election to the professorship, a volume of Specimens of Arabic Poetry, from the earliest times to the extinction of the kalifis, with some account of the authors. Having been appointed chaplain by Lord Elgin to the Embassy at Constantinople, he prosecuted his researches into Eastern literature, and made a lengthened tour through Asia Minor, Palestine, Greece, and Italy, collecting in his travels several valuable Greek and Syriac MSS., for a projected critical edition of the New Testament, collated with the Syriac and other versions—a work, however, which he did not live to complete. On his return he was presented by the Bishop of Carlisle to the living of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where he died in 1804. After his death there appeared a volume of poems, descriptive of the scenes of his travels, with prefaces extracted from his journal; and amongst other valuable works which he left unfinished was a half-corrected edition of the Bible in Arabic.