Page:Imperialdictiona03eadi Brandeis Vol3a.pdf/794

PRI  labour and research. He is the author, moreover, of a Life of Cleveland, natural son of Cromwell, and a history of Margaret of Anjou, in two volumes. He translated likewise the Pamela, Clarissa, and Grandison of Richardson.—W. J. P.  PRICE,, D.C.L , founder of Jesus college, Oxford, was born at Brecon, and educated at Oxford university, with which his name is so creditably associated as one of its liberal benefactors. He took his doctor's degree there in 1525, and about seventeen years later was made one of the first prebendaries of Rochester, and the treasurer of St. David's. Believing that his fellow-countrymen would be greatly benefited by the establishment of a college for them, in connection with the university, he felt desirous of bestowing a portion of his property on the founding of such an institution. With this intention he petitioned Queen Elizabeth that she would graciously be pleased to found, in order that he might endow such a college. In compliance with his request her majesty granted a charter of foundation "for Jesus college, within the city and university of Oxford, of Queen Elizabeth's foundation;" and towards the support of this society, consisting of a principal, eight fellows, and eight scholars, Dr. Price settled estates to the yearly value of £160, the queen adding a quantity of timber from the forests of Stowe and Shotover. Dr. Price died in 1574.—D. T.  PRICE,, was a native of Breconshire, and was educated at Pembroke college, Oxford, 1534. Having been called to the bar, he was appointed by King Henry VIII. counsel to the court of the marches, and subsequently one of the commissioners for visiting and dissolving the monasteries in the county of Brecon, where he obtained some considerable grants. He wrote, in answer to Polydore Virgil, "Historiæ Britanniæ Defensio," which was published in 1573, twenty years after the author's death.—R. H.  PRICE or PRICÆUS,, of Welsh descent, was born in London in 1600, and studied at Oxford. He went into Italy with the earl of Arundel's family, and afterwards into Ireland with the earl of Stratford, upon whose disgrace he came to London, where he was so zealous in the royalist cause that he was put into prison. After his release he went abroad again, and resided at Florence, where the grand-duke made him keeper of his museum. He was also professor of Greek at Pisa, and was patronized by Cardinal Barberini. At Rome he entered St. Augustine's monastery, and died there in 1676. He wrote on the New Testament; notes on Apuleius, &c.—B. H. C.  PRICE,, a dissenting minister in London, eminent in political science and speculative philosophy, was born in 1723 at Tynton in Glamorganshire. In early life he was trained by his father, a Calvinist preacher in the same county, with a view to trade, but ultimately the bent of his genius diverted his course to letters and theology. His father died in 1739, dissatisfied with the departure of young Price from his hereditary Calvinism, and with his unitarian tendencies. About 1741, by the advice of his uncle, the colleague of Dr. Watts, he was removed from the dissenting seminary at Talgarth to an academy in London, founded by Mr. Coward, where he studied mathematics, philosophy, and theology. For the remainder of his life London was his home, in which he officiated as a minister in various meeting-houses of the dissenters for nearly half a century. Stoke Newington, Edmonton, Newington Green, Old Jewry Lane, and Hackney, were his chief spheres of ministerial labour. About 1765 he was chosen a fellow of the Royal Society, and contributed many important scientific and economical papers to its Transactions. In 1769 he received the degree of D.D. from the university of Glasgow, then presided over by Principal Leechman, an honour which nearly twenty years afterwards was again conferred on him by Yale college, in consideration of his great exertions, through the press and otherwise, on behalf of America during the war of independence. In the latter part of his life he was for a few years one of the tutors in a dissenting academy at Hackney. Price died in London in March, 1791. His remains rest with those of the many distinguished dissenters who are laid in Bunhill Fields. The life of this eminent thinker was one of remarkable energy, not unfitly typified by the unusual muscular and nervous activity of his slender person. His eager, rapid walk, with his stooping figure, buttoned coat, and thoughtful eyes fixed on the ground, are recorded by tradition. He was a writer of pamphlets and books for more than thirty years. Questions of political economy and finance frequently engaged his pen. In 1769 he published a work on "Reversionary Payments," which, as well as his "Observations on Equitable Assurances," cast light on many problems in a department of science since greatly developed. His "Appeal" on the national debt and in behalf of the sinking fund engaged much attention, and it is said that Mr. Pitt repeatedly availed himself of his suggestions in matters of finance. Price was the friend or correspondent of Lords Shelburne and Stanhope, and of several of the bishops, as well as of Franklin, and James Harris, the author of Hermes. No inconsiderable part of his life was given to controversy, in which he uniformly appeared as a firm supporter of the principles of civil and religious liberty. The American war of independence was a prolific subject for his pen. Towards its close he declined an invitation by congress to make the United States his home. In his last years he welcomed with enthusiasm the early triumphs of the French revolution. But the permanent reputation of Dr. Price is due to his philosophical writings, in which he maintained with originality and power opinions at variance in many respects with the general current of doctrine in England, in the generation to which he belonged. Some sermons he had preached on "Prayer," were published in 1767, in the form of a philosophical essay on that subject, along with three dissertations on "Providence," the "Miraculous Evidence of Christianity," and on the "Reasons for expecting that virtuous men shall meet after death in a state of happiness"—the volume thus embracing some of the most interesting questions in the philosophy of theology. In 1778 appeared, under the auspices of his friend Dr. Priestley, "A Free Discussion of the Doctrines of Materialism, and Philosophical Necessity, in a correspondence between Dr. Price and Dr. Priestley," with an introduction by Dr. Priestley explaining the nature of the controversy. In these letters some of the problems regarding the nature of matter and the human mind, the immortality of the soul, and free will, are examined with great acuteness by Dr. Price. But his most celebrated philosophical work, the "Review of the Principal Questions and Difficulties in Morals," was published many years before, in 1758, when Price was comparatively a young man. Here, as in his later writings, he appears as the antagonist of the empiricism popularly associated with the name of Locke, and as the leading representative of his time in England, of the theory of the double origin of human knowledge—the defender of what has been called its a priori, as well as of its merely a posteriori factor. The doctrine of Price with respect to the Good and the True reminds us more of the pure reason of his great German contemporary Kant, than of the internal and common sense of the early Scottish school of Hutcheson and Reid. "If by sensation we understand the effects arising from the impressions made on our minds by external agents, and by reflection the notice the mind takes of its own operations, it would be impossible," he says, "to derive some of our most important ideas from these. The power that understands, or the faculty within us that discerns truth, and that compares all objects and ideas and judges of them, is itself a spring of new ideas. . . Sense presents particular forms to the mind, but cannot rise to any general ideas. Sense sees only the outside of things, reason acquaints itself with their natures. Sensation is only a mode of feeling in the mind, but knowledge implies an actual or vital energy of the mind. . . After the mind, from whatever causes, has been furnished with ideas of various objects and existences, they become themselves further objects to our intellective faculty; from whence arises a new set of ideas which are the perceptions of this faculty, and the objects of which are not the mind's own affections, but necessary truth. Antecedently to these, whatever other ideas we may be furnished with, nothing is understood. Whatever seeds or subjects of knowledge there may be in the mind, nothing is known." The application of these general principles to various parts of human knowledge, and in particular to the intellectual phenomena of substance and cause, truth and error, right and wrong, is the most characteristic part of the philosophy of Price, in the course of which he reveals affinities to Platonism, which meet us unexpectedly in a writer of that period, and in the ranks of English dissent.—A. C. F.  PRICE,, an eminent Welsh scholar, was born near Builth in Brecknockshire in 1787. The second son of a poor Welsh clergyman, he was educated at a village dame school, where he learned to read and write Welsh, and completed his studies at the Brecon grammar-school. Entering the Church of England, he received, after a long struggle as a curate, the vicarage of Cwmdu, which he retained until his death. So early 