Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Solanus, Moses
SOLANUS, MOSES, or Moïse du Soul (d. 1735?), Greek scholar, was grandson of Paul du Soul of Tours, who was professor of theology and rector of the academy at Saumur between 1657 and 1661. As a protestant he was driven from France by persecution, and seems to have settled at Amsterdam, whence he came to England. His fine Greek scholarship recommended him to the notice of men of influence at both Oxford and Cambridge. Encouraged by Dr. Bentley, he projected an edition of Lucian, of which in 1708 he printed a specimen at Cambridge, and he collected materials for a life of that writer. Nothing came of this ‘famous and accurate’ edition. In the same year he was employed in the family of the Earl of Wharton (Hearne, Collections, ii. 102). In 1722 and 1723 he was at The Hague, whither, Professor Mayor conjectures, ‘he may have gone to negotiate with the Wetsteins.’ In conjunction with Brutel de la Rivière, he translated Prideaux's ‘Connection’ into French, as ‘Histoire des Juifs et des peuples voisins’ (Amsterdam, 1722). Returning to England, he completed a splendid edition of Plutarch's ‘Lives’ (5 vols. London, 1729), which had been commenced by Augustine Bryan [q. v.] and which Thomas Bentley, LL.D. [q. v.], had, in the first instance, proposed to continue. A passage in the preface (p. xi) of Reitz's edition of ‘Lucian’ shows that he was living after 1733. He appears to have died before 1737.
[Haag's La France Protestante, vol. iv.; Paper by Professor J. E. B. Mayor in Cambr. Antiq. Soc. Commun. vol. v.]