Note 50 — THE LIFE OF LUCIAN.

Charles Blount, the son of Sir Henry, and brother to Sir Edward Pope Blount. He early appeared as a defender and admirer of Dryden, by publishing an answer to Leigh’s “Censure of the Rota in the Conquest of Granada.” It was entitled, “Mr Dryden vindicated, in Reply to the Friendly Vindication of Mr Dryden, with Reflections on the Rota.” Mr Blount distinguished himself as a friend to civil liberty during the crisis preceding the Revolution; but was still better known by the deistical tracts entitled “Anima Mundi,” “Life of Appolonius Tyaneus,” “Diana of the Ephesians,” and the “Religio Laici,” which last he published anonymously in 1683, and inscribed to our author.

The death of Blount was voluntary. Having lost his wife, the daughter of Sir Timothy Tyrrel of Shotover, he fell in love with her sister, and being unable to remove her scruples upon the lawfulness of their union, shot himself in a fit of despair, in August 1693. His miscellaneous works were published by Galden in 1695.

He was a man of deep and extensive reading, and probably better qualified, in point of learning, to translate Lucian, than most of his coadjutors.