Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 58.djvu/50

Uri 1794 and the last in 1797. He superintended the publication of several of the later volumes of the ‘Statistical Account’ and drew up the general indices. In appreciation of his labours in December 1795 he was presented by David Stewart, earl of Buchan, to the parish of Uphall in Linlithgow. He was ordained on 14 July 1796, and died unmarried on 28 March 1798 at Uphall.

[Scots Mag. 1808, pp. 903–5; Scott's Fasti Eccles. Scotican. I. i. 206; Chambers's Biogr. Dict. of Eminent Scotsmen, 1870; Addison's Roll of Glasgow Graduates, 1898.] 

URI, JOANNES (1726–1796), orientalist, born in 1726 at Körös in Hungary, studied the oriental languages under J. J. Schultens at Leyden, where he took the degrees of Ph.D. and D.D., and published in 1761 a short treatise on Hebrew etymology called ‘Prima decas originum Hebræarum genuinarum,’ and also (for the Leyden library) an edition of the Arabic poem in honour of the prophet Mohammed called the ‘Burda,’ with a Latin translation and further notes on Hebrew etymology; this work he strangely dedicated ‘Deo ter O. M. atque amicis charissimis dilectissimis.’ In 1766, when the university of Oxford thought the time had come for a catalogue to be made of the oriental manuscripts which had been accumulating in the Bodleian Library for two hundred years, a savant was sought for in Holland to undertake this work, and by the advice of Sir Joseph Yorke (afterwards Baron Dever) [q. v.], then ambassador in the Netherlands, communicated to Archbishop Secker, Uri received an invitation to Oxford, where he was provided with a stipend and set to compile the required catalogue. After twenty years' preparation this catalogue appeared in 1787, bearing the title ‘Bibliothecæ Bodleianæ Codd. MStorum Orientalium videlicet Hebræorum, Chaldaicorum, Syriacorum, &c., Catalogus.’ Little praise, however, can be assigned it; besides numerous mistakes (corrected for the most part in the second volume of the catalogue by Nicoll and Pusey, which appeared in 1835), the arrangement is very faulty, different volumes of the same work frequently being registered many pages apart. While at Oxford he published an edition of some Persian and Turkish letters (1771), and also a short commentary on Daniel's Weeks with some other cruces of Old Testament exegesis. He is said to have given instruction in the oriental languages at Oxford, Joseph White [q. v.] being his most distinguished pupil. In his old age he was discharged by the delegates of the press, but by the kindness of Henry Kett [q. v.] and other friends he obtained a provision for his last years. He died at his lodgings in Oxford on 18 Oct. 1796.

[Gent. Mag. 1796 ii. 884, 1825 ii. 184; Life of Adam Clarke, 1833, vol. ii.; Macray's Annals of the Bodleian Library.]  URIEN (fl. 570), British prince, is first mentioned in the tract known as the ‘Saxon Genealogies’ which is appended to the ‘Historia Britonum’ of Nennius in four manuscripts of that work, and is believed to have been written about 690. According to this, ‘Urbgen’ (the old Welsh form of what still earlier was ‘Urbigena’—see, Arthurian Legend, p. 242) was one of four British chieftains who fought (about 570?) against ‘Hussa,’ king of the Angles of Northumbria. He and his sons also waged war, with varying fortune, against Theodric of the same region. At last he was slain during an expedition which had shut up the English host in the isle of ‘Medcaut’ (probably Lindisfarne), at the instigation of a rival prince ‘Morcant,’ who was jealous of his military fame (, ed. Mommsen, p. 206). It is in favour of the trustworthiness of this account that the writer of the ‘Genealogies’ appears to have had a special interest in the family of Urien. The tenth-century genealogist of Harl. MS. 3859 makes Urien, conformably to Welsh tradition, the son of Cynfarch ap Meirchion (Cymrodor, ix. 173).

Like most of the men who took part in the early conflicts with the English, Urien became a hero of British tradition, and so shadowy is the part he and his family play in the mediæval poems and romances that Professor Rhys inclines to the view that the historical ‘Urbigena’ and a mythological ‘Urogenos’ have united to furnish the traits of the later ‘Urien’ (Arthurian Legend, pp. 242–3). In the ‘Triads’ he appears as one of the three ‘battle bulls’ of the isle of Britain (Myvyrian Archaiology, 1st ser. No. 12;, Four Ancient Books, ii. 456); his death at the hands of Llofan Llaw Ddifro was one of the three atrocious killings of the islands (1st ser. No. 38; Four Ancient Books, ii. 462; Red Book of Hergest, i. 303). Of the poems printed by Skene in the ‘Four Ancient Books of Wales,’ eight from the ‘Book of Taliesin’ (ii. 183–93, 195–6) and two from the ‘Red Book of Hergest’ (ii. 267–73, 291–3) deal with the fortunes of Urien, who is variously described as ‘Lord of Rheged,’ ‘Lord of the evening’ (echwydd), ‘Ruler of Llwyfenydd’ (Lennox), ‘Prince of Catraeth,’ ‘Golden ruler of the North,’