BRYANT, Sir Francis, a soldier, statesman, and a poet of no inconsiderable fame in his time. In the year 1522, the 14th of Henry VIII., he attended in a military capacity the Earl of Surrey in his expedition to the coast of Brittany, and commanded the troops in the attack of the town of Morlaix, which he took and burnt. For this service he was knighted on the spot by the earl. In 1529 he was sent ambassador to France, and the year following to Rome, on account of the king’s divorce. He was gentleman of the privy chamber to king Henry VIII. and to his successor Edward VI., in the beginning of whose reign he marched with the protector against the Scots; and, after the battle of Musselburgh, in which lie commanded the light horse, he was made banneret. In 1548 he was appointed chief governor of Ireland, where he married the Countess of Ormond. He died soon afterwards, and was buried at Waterford. He wrote, 1. Songs and Sonnets, some of which were printed with those of the Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt, Lond. 1565; 2. Letters written from Rome concerning the king’s divorce, manuscript.

Bryant, Jacob, a profound scholar, mythologist, and sacred historian, born at Plymouth in 1715. His father had a place in the customs, and was afterwards stationed in Kent, where his son was first sent to a provincial school, from which he was removed to Eton. Here he appears to have remained till 1736, the date of his election to King’s College, Cambridge, and he took his degrees of bachelor and master of arts in 1740 and 1744. He returned to Eton in the capacity of private tutor to the late Duke of Marlborough, then Marquis of Blandford; and the good taste which his pupil showed through life, in the protection of the fine arts, and in the pursuit of science, sufficiently demonstrated the beneficial influence of his instructor’s example. In 1756 he went to the Continent as private secretary to the Duke of Marlborough, then master-general of the ordnance and commander-in-chief of the forces in Germany; and he was rewarded, after his return, for his various services to the family, by a lucrative appointment in the ordnance, which allowed him ample leisure to indulge his literary taste in a variety of refined investigations, and to exercise his zeal for the cause of religion in a multitude of works, calculated for the illustration of the Scriptures, and the demonstration of their authenticity and divine authority.

1. His first publication was entitled Observations and Inquiries relating to various parts of Ancient History, containing Dissertations on the wind Euroclydon, and on the island Melite, together with an account of Egypt in its most early state, and of the Shepherd Kings, 1767. In this work he attempts to prove that the Melite on which St Paul was wrecked was not Malta, but one of the Illyrian islands in the Adriatic, now called Melede; and he endeavours to illustrate several points in the early history of the oriental, and especially of the Aramitic nations.

2. But his most elaborate performance was his New System or Analysis of Ancient Mythology, wherein an attempt is made to divest tradition of fable, and to reduce truth to its original purity, 3 vols. 4to, 1774, 1776. In this attempt the author has equally displayed his deep and extensive learning and his inventive fancy; but it must be confessed that, on a minute examination, the work exhibits much more of a poetical imagination than of a sound judgment; and that, in endeavouring to substitute etymological for historical evidence, he has been completely unsuccessful. Nothing can afford a more satisfactory kind of proof than etymology taken on a large scale, and considered as a mode of tracing the relations of nations to each other, by the affinities of their languages; since the accumulation of a multitude of probabilities, each weak when taken separately, becomes at last equivalent to absolute certainty. But nothing, on the other hand, can be more fallacious, or more liable to controversy, than single etymological inferences, in particular cases, when one of these slight resemblances is magnified into a striking likeness, and even an identity, which is then made the foundation of a magnificent superstructure in mythology or in history. Mr Richardson has shown, in the Preface to his Dictionary, how much Mr Bryant was mistaken in some of his reasoning respecting the signification and derivation of particular words; and even if he had been more correct in these instances, the conclusions which he has deduced from his etymologies would by no means have been perfectly legitimate. Jablonsky seems to have exhibited one of the strongest examples of this dangerous abuse of learning, in which he has been followed not only by Mr Bryant, but by several other modern writers equally visionary, who have commonly been very imperfectly acquainted with the languages on which their conjectures depended, and have been still more deficient in that sort of common sense and correct feeling, confirmed by experience, which constitutes the most essential part of the qualifications of a critic, and the want of which can never be compensated by the most unwearied labour of a mere mechanical commentator.

3. Some remarks which had been made on particular passages of Mr Bryant’s work led him to publish A t' ιη ' dication of the Apamean Medal ; of the inscription N∩E, and of another coin, in the Archceologia∙> vol. iv. art. *b [7:5:619]22, 23. 4. He deviated somewhat more widely from the usual objects of his researches, and apparently without any decided advantage over his adversary, in An Address to Dr Priestley, on the doctrine of philosophical necessity, 8vo, 1780. 5. He also published in the same year Vindi cia Flavianoe, or a vindication of the testimony given by Josephus concerning our Saviour, 8vo.

6. Unfortunately for the credit of his critical discrimination in matters of old English literature, Mr Bryant was the author of Observations on the Poems of Thomas Rowley, in which the authenticity of these poems is ascertained, 2 vols. 12mo, 1781. If there could be any excuse for the commission of forgeries like that of Chatterton, it would be found in their serving as a valuable test of the degree of confidence which it is justifiable to place in the decrees of the most powerful critics respecting other questions of a more ambiguous nature.

7. Mr Bryant contributed to the publication of the Duke of Marlborough' 's Collection of Gems, the Latin explanations contained in the first volume, fol. 1783. 8. He inserted in the Archoeologia, vii. 387, some Collections on the Zingara or Gipsey Language, which has been since sufficiently proved to be one of the many derivatives of the old Sanscrit. 9. Some time afterwards he published an anonymous Treatise on the Authenticity of the Scriptures, and the truth of the Christian religion, 1792. 10. This was succeeded by his Observations upon the Plagues inflicted upon the Egyptians, 8vo, 1794.

11. His opinions respecting the existence of the city of Troy, and the veracity of Homer as a historian, raised up against him a host of powerful adversaries; and in a question of this nature, upon which the decisions of mankind are so manifestly influenced by their sensibility to poetical beauty, and their early habits and attachments, a much more cautious attempt to innovate might easily have been unsuccessful. Whatever learning and talents may have been exhibited in this controversy, itwill hardly be believed byan impartial judge,reasoning on the general probabilities of the case, that Homer intended the actions of his heroes, any more than their genealogies, to be historically correct; but, at the same time, it will readily be admitted that he was much more likely to take, for the scene of his poem, a town that had really existed, and, for its subject, a traditional report of a war which had actually been carried on, than to have invented a fabulous city and an imaginary warfare, without any historical foundation whatever. Mr Bryant published on this subject Observations on a Treatise entitled Description of the Plain of Troy, by Mr de Chevalier, 4to, 1795. 12. A Dissertation concerning the War of Troy, and the expedition of the Greeks, as described by Homer; showing that no such expedition was ever undertaken, and that no such city in Phrygia existed; 4to, 1796. 13. Observations on the Vindication of Homer, written by J. B. S. Morritt, Esq. 4to, 1799.

14. He had, in the mean time, not discontinued his theological studies, and had published an Essay on The Sentiments of Pliilo Judaeus concerning the word of God, 8vo, 1797. His last work was a volume of Dissertations on various Subjects in, the Old Testament, which had been nearly completed thirty years before. The subjects which had particularly attracted his attention were the histories of Balaam, Sampson, and Jonah; and besides Philo Judaeus and Josephus, he had endeavoured to illustrate some controverted passages of Justin Martyr, as well as many other departments of religious and historical discussion.

l’he habits of Mr Bryant’s maturer life were in general completely sedentary; although, in his youth, he had taken his full share in the cultivation of the manly exer cises common to Etonians, and had once the good fortune to save, by his proficiency in swimming, the life of Dr Barnard, afterwards provost of Eton. His conversation was elegant and animated, his manners mild but firm; he exerted himself to please others, and was himself easily pleased. He was much courted in society, and his residence at Cypenham, near Windsor, was not unfrequently visited by persons of the highest possible rank. He never married. He died in bis eighty-ninth year, the 14th November 1804, from the immediate consequence of an accidental blow. He left his library to King’s College, having, however, previously made some valuable presents out of it to the king and to the Duke of Marlborough. He also bequeathed L.2000 to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and L.1000 for the use of the superannuated collegers of Eton school. (Gentlemans Magazine, lxxiv. p. 1080, 1165; Nichols’s Literary Anecdotes, iv. 667, 8vo, Lond. 1812; Aikin’s Diographical Dictionary, x.) (l. l.)