(De Morgan in Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. iv. 341). He was in frequent intercourse with Sloane and other scientific men, was an earnest advocate of inoculation, and when doubts of its complete efficacy were entertained experimented on himself. A portrait of Maty was by his own order engraved after his death by Bartolozzi to be given to his friends. Of these a hundred copies were struck off and the plate destroyed. An oil portrait by Bartholomew Dupan in the board room at the British Museum depicts a young man with a refined and amiable face.
Maty's chief works are:
- ‘Ode sur la Rebellion en Écosse,’ 8vo, Amsterdam, 1746.
- ‘Essai sur le Caractère du Grand Medecin, ou Eloge Critique de Mr. Herman Boerhaave,’ 8vo, Cologne, 1747.
- ‘Authentic Memoirs of the Life of Richard Mead, M.D.,’ 12mo, London, 1755. Expanded from the memoir in the ‘Journal Britannique.’
At the time of his death Maty had nearly finished the ‘Memoirs of the Earl of Chesterfield,’ which were completed by his son-in-law Justamond, and prefixed to the earl's ‘Miscellaneous Works,’ 2 vols. 4to, 1777. Maty had been one of Chesterfield's executors. He completed for the press Thomas Birch's ‘Life of John Ward,’ published in 1766, and translated from the French ‘A Discourse on Inoculation, read before the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, 24 April 1754, by Mr. La Condamine,’ with a preface, postscript, and notes, 1765, 8vo, and ‘New Observations on Inoculation, by Dr. Garth, Professor of Medicine at Paris,’ 1768. Maty's contributions to the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ are enumerated in Watt's ‘Bibl. Britannica.’ Some French verses by him on the death of the Comte de Gisors are given in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine,’ 1758, p. 435.
[Chalmers's Biog. Dict.; Munk's Coll. of Phys. ii. 265–7; Nichols's Anecdotes of Bowyer, p. 607; Lit. Anecd. iii. 257–8, and vols. ii. iv. and v. passim; Edwards's Founders of the British Museum, pp. 337, 342–4; Hume's Letters, ed. Birkbeck Hill, pp. 94–5; Hutchinson's Biog. Medica, ii. 133; Éloy's Dict. Hist. de la Medecine, 1778, iii. 194; Thomson's Hist. of the Royal Society, App. xlvi; De Morgan's Budget of Paradoxes, 1872, p. 17; London Magazine, xxv. 302; Gent. Mag. 1776 p. 191, 1778 p. 319; Rees's Cyclopædia, vol. xxiii.; English Cyclopædia, iv. 153; Gibbon's Memoirs, 1827, i. 105–7, 202; Philosophical Trans. vol. lxvii.; Boswell's Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, i. 384; Apologie de la Conduite et de la Doctrine de Sr Paul Maty, Utrecht, 1730; Add. MS. 28539, f. 259, and 32903, f. 29.]
MATY, PAUL HENRY (1745–1787), assistant-librarian of the British Museum, son of Matthew Maty [q. v.], was born in London in 1745. He was admitted a king's scholar at Westminster in 1758, and was elected in 1763 to Trinity College, Cambridge, whence he graduated B.A. in 1767 and M.A. in 1770 (Grad. Cantabr. s.v. Matty'). He was nominated to one of the travelling fellowships of his college, and passed three years abroad, after which he was appointed chaplain to David Murray, lord Stormont (afterwards second Earl of Mansfield) [q. v.], English ambassador at the court of France. He vacated his fellowship in 1775 by his marriage to a daughter of Joseph Clerke of Wethersfield, Essex, sister to Captain Charles Clerke [q. v.], the successor to Captain Cook. In the following year doubts conceived as to the consistency of the Thirty-nine Articles, especially on such points as predestination and original sin, compelled him to refrain from seeking any further ecclesiastical appointment; his scruples, which evince a tendency to Arianism, were printed in full in the 'Gentleman's Magazine' for October 1777. Fortunately for him, however, he obtained, upon his father's death in July 1776, the situation of an assistant-librarian in the British Museum, and in 1782 was promoted to be under-librarian in the department of natural history and antiquities. Ile also succeeded in 1776 to the foreign secretaryship of the Royal Society, of which he had been elected a member 13 Feb. 1772 (Thomson), and on 30 Nov. 1778, on the withdrawal of Dr. Horsley, he became prin-cipal secretary. In this capacity he threw himself with unexplained and ungovernable heat into the controversy which raged about the virtual dismissal of Dr. Charles Hutton [q. v.] from the post of foreign secretary by the president, Sir Joseph Banks. In a pamphlet entitled 'An History of the instances of Exclusion from the Royal Society … with Strictures on the formation of the Council and other instances of the despotism of Sir Joseph Banks, the present President, and of his incapacity for his high office ' (1784), he proposed that, as a means of protest against the president, the dissatisfied minority should form themselves into a solid phalanx, and resolutely oppose any admission whatsoever into the society, a proposal from which all moderate supporters of Maty's views dissented. Having tried in vain to organise a regular opposition under Horsley, Maty resigned his office on 25 March 1784, and his resignation helped to restore peace to the society (Weld, Hist, of Roy. Soc. ii. 160 sq.; Kippis, Observations on the late Contests in the Roy. Soc.) As secretary and an officer of the society he was not called upon to take any active part in the dissension, but here, as elsewhere, 'his vivacity
