EDWARD, a learned English divine, and the first oriental scholar of his time, was the eldest son of Edward Pocock, and born in November 1604, at Oxford, where he was also educated. In 1628 he was admitted probationer-fellow of his college; and about the same time he had prepared an edition of the second Epistle of St Peter, the second and third of St John, and the Epistle of St Jude, in Syriac and Greek, with a Latin translation and notes. In 1629 he was ordained priest, and appointed chaplain to the English merchants at Aleppo, where he arrived in October 1630, and continued for five or six years, during which he distinguished himself by his zeal and fortitude, particularly whilst the plague raged there in 1634. At length returning to England, he was in 1639 appointed reader of the Arabic Lectures founded by Archbishop Laud. Three years afterwards he went to Constantinople, where he prosecuted his studies of the eastern tongues, and procured many valuable manuscripts. After a residence of nearly four years in that city, he embarked in 1640; and taking Paris in his way, visited Gabriel Sionita, the famous Maronite, and also Hugo Grothus. In 1643 he was presented to the rectory of Childrey in Berkshire; and about three years afterwards married the daughter of Mr Thomas Burdett. About the middle of 1647 he obtained the restitution of the salary of his Arabic Lecture, which had been detained from him about three years. In 1648 Charles I., being then a prisoner in the Isle of Wight, nominated Pocock to the professorship of Hebrew, and the canonry of Christ Church annexed to it; but in 1650 he was ejected from his canonry for refusing to take the engagement, and soon afterwards a vote passed for depriving him of his Hebrew and Arabic professorships. But several governors of houses, and others, having presented a petition in his favour, he was suffered to enjoy both these places. He had some years before published his Specimen Historiae Abraham, a very learned work, and now appeared his Porta Mosis; and soon afterwards the English polyglot edition of the Bible, to which he had largely contributed, and also Eutychius' Annals, with a Latin version, gave evidence of his industry and learning. At the Restoration he was reinstated in the canonry of Christ Church, and also received the degree of Doctor of Divinity. He then published his Arabic version of Grothus' Treatise of the Truth of the Christian Religion; and an Arabic poem entitled Carmen Ab-Ismaelis To-grai, with a Latin translation and notes. Soon afterwards he published Gregory Abulfaragius' Historia Dynastiarum; but this work did not meet with much encouragement from the public, a circumstance which his biographer accounts for in a manner not very creditable to the reign of Charles II. as compared with the Protectorate, when solid learning was appreciated and rewarded. The fact seems to be, that the love of Arabic learning was now growing cold; and Pocock himself, in his correspondence with Greaves, appears to be not only sensible that such was the case, but very much hurt by the decline of sound literary taste. The same circumstance also may in some measure account for this distinguished scholar not having obtained higher preferment at the period of the Restoration, when such numbers of vacant dignities were conferred on far inferior men. Perhaps he was almost the only instance of a clergyman, then at the highest pitch of eminence for learning and every other merit proper to his profession, who lived throughout the reign of Charles II. without the least regard from the court, except the favour sometimes done him of being called upon to translate Arabic letters from the princes of the Levant, or the credentials of ambassadors coming from thence; a service for which we do not find that he obtained any recompense besides fair words and hollow compliments. But his modesty equalled his merit; and after presenting Abulfaragius to the king, he ceased to obtrude his claims on the attention of royalty. In 1674 he published an Arabic version of the principal parts of the Liturgy of the Church of England; and a few years afterwards appeared his Commentary on the Prophesies of Micah, Malachi, Hosea, and Joel. This truly great man died in 1691, after having been for many years confessedly the first orientalist in Europe; and he was no less worthy of admiration for his uncommon modesty and humility, and