RICHARD, the author of a famous History of the Turks, was born in Northamptonshire about the middle of the sixteenth century; he studied at Oxford, and became master of the free school of Sandwich in Kent, where he died in 1610. He was the author of a Latin-Greek Hebrew Grammar, and of some minor works bearing chiefly on Oriental history. On his General History of the Turks he spent twelve years of his life. On the strength of this book Johnson, in a number of the Rambler, assigned to Knolles the first place among English historians. "His style," says the great critic, "though somewhat obscured by time, and sometimes vitiated by false taste, is pure, nervous, elevated, and clear." The verdict of Johnson is confirmed by Hallam; but a perusal of the work will satisfy most modern readers that these flattering criticisms are completely over- charged. There is a strong smack of ill-natured truth in the remarks of Walpole, who said that, as a history, the work was a tissue of fables, and, as a piece of style, one of the most wearisome books in the world, with weak sen- tences of a page long. Several continuations of the work have been published, the best being by Paul Ricaut, folio, London, 1680; but as a history it is now entirely super- seded.