Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 07.djvu/310

 Two Pamphlets,’ &c. 1648, 4to. 12. ‘A Vindication of the Ministers of the Gospel in and about London from the unjust aspersions cast upon their former actings for the Parliament, as if they promoted the bringing of the king to capitall punishment,’ &c., 1648, 4to (i.e. January 1649; reprinted, Calamy, ‘Cont.,’ 737; ‘Harl. Misc.’ ii. 512; Scott's edition of Somers's ‘Tracts,’ v. 258). 13. ‘Case as lecturer in Paul's’ (, who calls it ‘a little pamphlet’). 14. ‘A Case concerning the Buying of Bishops' Lands, with the lawfulness thereof, and the difference between the contractors for the sale of those lands and the corporation of Wells,’ 1659, 4to (among those who wrote in reply was George Fox, the quaker, ‘An Answer to Dr. Burgess's his book, entituled A Case &c.,’ 1659, 4to). 15. ‘No Sacrilege nor Sinne to aliene or purchase the lands of Bishops or others, whose offices are abolished,’ 2nd edit. 1659, 8vo. 16. ‘No Sacrilege … Cathedral Lands as such,’ &c., 3rd edit. 1660, 4to (these three are substantially the same tract, successively revised; this last, published after No. 18, has a postscript in reply to John Pearson, afterwards bishop of Chester). 17. ‘Prudent Silence, a sermon in Mercers-Chappel to the Lord Mayor and the City, 14 Jan. 1648, shewing the great sin and mischief of destroying kings,’ 1660, 8vo (from Amos v. 13; dedicated to Charles II, and also to the Houses of Parliament). 18. ‘Reasons showing the Necessity of Reformation of the Public Doctrine, Worship, Rites and Ceremonies, Church Government, and Discipline, &c., offered to Parliament by divers Ministers of sundry counties in England,’ 1660, 4to (Baxter says that Burges drew up these ‘Reasons;’ Pearson and Henry Savage replied to them). 19. ‘Some of the Differences and Alterations in the present Common Prayer-Book from the book established by the Act in the 5th and 6th of Ed. VI and 1st of Q. Eliz.,’ 1660, 4to. 20. ‘Antidote against Antisobrius’ (, who says it was ‘printed about 1660’). Wood mentions also sermons on 2 Chron. xv. 2, and Ezra x. 2, 3, but had not seen them.

[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iii. 681, and Fasti; Calamy's Account, 1713, p. 586; Contin. 1727, ii. 736; Neal's Hist. of the Puritans, Dublin, 1759, ii. 365, 368, iv. 332; Palmer's Nonconf. Memorial, 1803, iii. 217; Collier's Eccl. Hist. (Barham), 1841, viii. 203 sq. 215; Marsden's Hist. Early Puritans, 1860, pp. 421, 441; Stoughton's Eccl. Hist. Ch. of the Commonwealth, 1867, ii. 229; Hunt's Religious Thought in Engl. 1870, i. 207 sq.; Masson's Life of Milton, 1873, iii. 11; Hook's Lives of the Abps. of Cant. (Laud), 1875, xi. 338 sq.; Mitchell's Westminster Assembly, 1883; Gardiner's Hist. of Engl. 1884, ix. 207; Somersetshire Archæological Soc. Proceedings, xii. ii. 37–41. See also J. O. Halliwell's Collection of Pieces in Zumerzet Dialect, p. 4.]  BURGES, GEORGE (1786?–1864), classical scholar, was born in a remote station in Bengal about 1786. His father dying soon after his birth, he was sent to England, and educated at the Charterhouse under Dr. Raine. Thence he proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1802, and gained a scholarship there in 1803; he graduated B.A. in 1807 and M.A. in 1810. He obtained one of the members' prizes in 1808, and again in 1809. At Cambridge he acted for many years as a private tutor; he had a great reputation for his knowledge of Greek, and is said to have spoken it like a native. He once had considerable private property, but lost it through speculations and inventions. Bishop Blomneld, whom he had attacked with great acrimony, procured for him, through Lord Melbourne, a pension of 100l. a year in 1841. Burges was a tory, and his politics appear to have inspired some of his classical criticisms. When in 1840 Lord Brougham translated the 'Do Corona' of Demosthenes, Burges met it with a long review in the 'Times,' assailing Brougham as well as his translation with extreme virulence.

In his own classical writings, although his learning was great and his criticism acute, he was led away by his arbitrary and querilous dissent from rival editors, and appeared to regard emendation more as an exercise of ingenuity than a means for restoring the original texts. He was a frequent contributor to Valpy's 'Classical Journal,' and in its pages constantly attacked Blomfield, who replied in the 'Museum Criticum,' each accusing the other of plagiarism, he published the 'Troades' of Euripides in 1807; the 'Phœnissa' in 1809; the 'Supplices' and 'Prometheus' of Æschylus in 1831: he translated the Greek 'Anthology,' and the bulk of Plato, for Bohn's classical library, in 1848; edited Poppo's 'Prolegomena,' with criticisms, in 1837: translated the new reading's in Hermann's posthumous edition of Æschylus in 1848: and edited the 'Fragment of Hermesianax' in 1839. Besides these classical works he wrote and dedicated to Byron a play called 'Erin, or the Cause of the Greeks,' by 'An Asiatic Liberal,' in 1823; and also wrote a pamphlet on the use of native guano in 1848. Burges used to contribute to the 'Gentleman's Magazine,' and for the 'Era' he wrote a series of papers called 'Hungry Handless,' to show the social evils of excessive machinery. The latter part of his life he spent