BRYANT

Jacob, a philologist and antiquary, was bom at Plymouth in 1715, and died in 1804 at his country seat, near Windsor. He studied at Eton and Cambridge, became afterwards tutor of the sons of the famous Duke of Marl borough, the eldest of whom he also accompanied to the Continent as his secretary. After his return he received, by the influence of his patron, a lucrative post in the ordnance, which gave him leisure for his reseiuxdies into Biblical, Roman, and Grecian antiquities. His most important work is the New System of Ancient Mythology, which appeared in three vols. 4to, 1774-76. Whatever may be the ingenuity and the learning of the author, it is justly objected that he has taken conjectures for proofs, and, in particular, that he has trusted too much to the deceptive conclusions of etymology. He was engaged in a famous dispute on the veracity of Homer and the existence of Troy, in which he endeavoured to show that there never was such a city an Troy, and that the whole expedition of the Greeks was a mere fiction of Homer. The object of one of his earlier treatises, which appeared in 1767, is to show that the island Melita, on which St. Paul was wrecked, was not Malta, but situated in the Adriatic. He endeavoured to illustrate the Scriptures by explanations drawn from Joeephus, from Philo the Jew, and from Justin Martyr; but in this, as in aQ his writings, his learning and his ingenuity are misled by his love of controversy and paradox.