lowing month. During that parliament, which lasted seventeen years, he is said to have become a pensioner, and to have received 100l. every session. Wood, who speaks very harshly of Bysshe, says that after obtaining his knighthood ‘he did nothing but deturpate, and so continued worse and worse till his death,’ which occurred in the parish of St. Paul, Covent Garden, on 15 Dec. 1679. He was obscurely buried late at night in the church of St. Olave, Jewry. He married Margaret, daughter of John Green of Boyshall, Essex, serjeant-at-law. She survived him. He edited:
- ‘Nicolai Vptoni de Studio Militari Libri Quatuor. Iohan. de Bado Aureo Tractatus de Armis. Henrici Spelmanni Aspilogia. Edoardus Bissæus e Codicibus MSS. primus publici juris fecit, notisque illustravit,’ Lond. 1654, fol. Dedicated to John Selden. The notes, originally written in English by Bysshe, were translated into Latin by David Whitford, an ejected student of Christ Church, Oxford.
- ‘Palladius, de Gentibus Indiæ et Bragmanibus. S. Ambrosius, de Moribus Brachmanorum. Anonymus, de Bragmanibus,’ Lond. 1665, 4to. In Greek and Latin. Dedicated to Lord-chancellor Clarendon.
At one time he contemplated writing the ‘Survey or Antiquities of the County of Surrey,’ but the work never appeared. Even Wood is constrained to admit that Bysshe was during the Commonwealth period a ‘great encourager of learning and learned men,’ and that he understood arms and armoury very well, though he ‘could never endure to take pains in genealogies.’ A modern and less prejudiced writer remarks that the praise of being a profound critic in the science of heraldry cannot justly be denied him. He is more learned and more perspicuous than his predecessors, and was the first who treated the subject as an antiquary and historian, endeavouring to divest it of extraneous matter (Dallaway, Science of Heraldry in England, 342).
[Berry's Sussex Genealogies, 199; Brayley's Surrey, iv. 295, 296; Publications of the Harleian Soc. viii. 135; Manning and Bray's Surrey, i. 292, ii. 285, 318, 319; Harl. MS. 813, art. 40; Addit. MSS. 22883, 26669, 26758, f. 13 b; Lansd. MS. 255, ff. 55, 58; Moule's Bibl. Heraldica; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. iii. 612; Noble's College of Arms, 236, 239, 248, 260, 261, 264, 280; Lists of Members of Parliament (official return), i. 502, 510, 529; Surrey Archæological Collections, iii. 381; Willis's Notitia Parliamentaria, iii. 236, 250, 266, 293; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iii. 1218.]
BYSSHE, EDWARD (fl. 1712), miscellaneous writer, describes himself as ‘gent.’ on the title-pages of his books. He probably belonged to the Surrey family of the name [see Bysshe, Sir Edward], but all that is positively known about him is that he sought a livelihood as a literary hack in London. In 1702 appeared the book by which he is remembered. Its title runs: ‘The Art of English Poetry: containing I. Rules for Making Verses. II. A Dictionary of Rhymes. III. A collection of the most Natural, Agreeable, and Noble Thoughts, viz. Allusions, Similes, Descriptions, and Characters of Persons and Things: that are to be found in the best English Poets.’ Bysshe addresses his dedication to ‘Edmund Dunch, Esq., of Little Wittenham in Berkshire.’ The first part of the volume is a business-like treatise on the laws of English prosody, with illustrations which prove Bysshe to have been an enthusiastic admirer of Dryden. The work was extraordinarily popular; a fifth edition was issued in 1714; a seventh, ‘corrected and enlarged,’ in 1724; an eighth is dated 1737. In 1714 the second and third parts were published separately under the title of ‘The British Parnassus; or a compleat Common Place-book of English Poetry’ (2 vols.), and this was reissued in 1718 with a new title-page (‘The Art of English Poetry, vols. the iiid and ivth’). Thomas Hood the younger reprinted Bysshe's ‘Rules’ as an appendix to his ‘Practical Guide to English Versification’ in 1877. Bysshe also edited in 1712 Sir Richard Bulstrode's ‘Letters,’ with a biographical introduction and a dedication addressed to George, lord Cardigan. In the same year there appeared a translation by Bysshe of Xenophon's ‘Memorabilia,’ which was dedicated to Lord Ashburnham from ‘London, 24 Nov. 1711,’ and was reissued in 1758.
[Bysshe's Works.]
BYTHNER, VICTORINUS (1605?–1670?), Hebrew grammarian, was a native of Poland. He became a member of the university of Oxford about 1635, and lectured on the Hebrew language in the great refectory at Christ Church until the outbreak of the civil war. When Charles I fixed the headquarters of his army at Oxford in 1643, Bythner removed to Cambridge. He afterwards lived in London, but in 1651 we find him again lecturer on Hebrew at Oxford. About 1664 he retired into Cornwall, and there practised medicine. The date of his death is unknown. Bythner's grammatical works, though written in curiously faulty Latin, are models of lucid and compact arrangement, and continued long in use. His Hebrew grammar, published in
