Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 14.djvu/154

 , appearing also as a vocalist and harpsichord player. Her father ‘occasionally accompanied’ her on the flute. On 31 July her advertisement announced that ‘the Cherokee kings and the two chiefs will be at the Great Room in Spring Gardens to hear Miss Davies perform.’ She appeared continually until the middle of August 1762, and from 10 Feb. until 13 Aug. 1763 at the Pillar and Gold Lamp in the Haymarket, and from 15 Aug. to 7 Oct. at the Swan and Hoop, Cornhill. The Davies family seem to have gone abroad until July in the following year, when they were in London again, and performed at Spring Gardens and Cornhill from 9 July to 8 Sept. They visited Paris after this, and, according to Pohl (Mozart in London, 61, 162), were several months in Ireland. In June 1767 they were again in London, living in Coventry Court, Haymarket, and performing at the auction rooms, Pall Mall, and the Swan and Hoop, Cornhill, where they gave their last concert on 14 Aug. For the next six years they were abroad, principally in Vienna and Italy. Marianne Davies continued to perform on the armonica, but as a vocalist she was far surpassed by her younger sister Cecilia [q. v.] Their father died in England in December 1773, and Marianne Davies, whose nerves had been shattered by playing so much on an instrument of so peculiar a nature, retired from public life, and does not seem to have performed after 1784 or 1785. The date of her death is variously stated. Pohl (ib. 61, 162) conjectures it to have taken place in 1792, while Grove's ‘Dictionary’ gives it as 1793; but a writer in the ‘Musical World’ (i. 30, 47, ii. 143) in 1836 says that she died ‘almost twenty years ago,’ and that her sister, who was devotedly attached to her, never recovered her loss.

[Public Advertiser and General Advertiser, 1751–73; authorities quoted above and in article on .]  DAVIES, MILES (1662–1715?), bibliographer, son of George and Elizabeth Davies, was born at Tre'r Abbot, in the parish of Whiteford, Flintshire, in 1662 (, Hist. of Whiteford and Holywell, p. 115). ‘I was born and bred,’ he says, ‘ with the straying herd, that is the papists.’ On 28 Sept. 1686 he was admitted into the English college at Rome; he took the oath on 10 May 1687, and was ordained priest on 17 April 1688. He left the college on 15 Oct. 1688 for England, with a letter of recommendation from the cardinal protector to the bishop who had jurisdiction in Wales (, Records, vi. 437). According to his own account he was educated in the seminaries of St. Omer, Douay, Liège, Paris, and Rome, and after his return to this country acted as missioner and popish emissary in Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, and Flintshire, being confessor and chaplain to the Roman catholic families at Hill End, at Malvern, and Blackmore Park, and others near the city of Worcester. In his ‘courses beyond the seas’ he went by the name of Blount, but he assumed that of Pollet when he was engaged on the mission. He says that he was converted to protestantism in consequence of attending the services at St. Peter's, Cornhill, of which parish, Beveridge, afterwards bishop of St. Asaph, was incumbent. For six or seven years before his public recantation of catholicism in 1705 he privately conformed to the protestant religion and endeavoured to get a livelihood by his own learning and industry. Isaac D'Israeli, who knew nothing about the early career of Davies, has drawn a fancy picture of him, as a typical ‘Mendicant Author, the hawker of his own works,’ whose life was passed in the study of languages and the sciences, who was ‘not only surrounded by his books, but with the more urgent companions of a wife and family,’ while his faculties ‘appear to have been disordered from the simplicity of his nature and driven to madness by indigence and insult’ (Calamities of Authors, ed. 1812, pp. 67, 70, 71). It is probable that after his recantation he adopted the legal profession, as he subscribes himself ‘counsellor-at-law,’ and in one of his volumes has a long digression on law and law-writers. His attempt to earn a livelihood as a professional author did not answer his expectations. He dedicated his books to persons of eminence without receiving a pecuniary acknowledgment, and was often rudely repulsed while hawking his publications in person from door to door. How long he carried on this unprosperous business, or when he died, has not been ascertained.

The most curious of his works is in seven volumes, bearing the general title of ‘Athenæ Britannicæ: or a Critical History of the Oxford and Cambrige [sic] Writers and Writings, with those of the Dissenters and Romanists as well as other Authors and Worthies, both Domestick and Foreign, both Ancient and Modern.’ This is a kind of bibliographical, biographical, and critical work, ‘the greatest part,’ says Baker the antiquary, ‘borrowed from modern historians, but containing some things more uncommon, and not easily to be met with.’ Vol. i. appears to have been first published separately with the title ‘Eἰκὼν μικρο-βιβλικὴ, sive Icon Libellorum; or a Critical History of Pamphlets,