JORTIN, John (1698-1770), a writer on theological subjects, was the son of a Protestant refugee from Brittany, and was born in London 23d October 1698. In his tenth year he entered Charterhouse school, and in 1715 he became a pensioner of Jesus College, Cambridge, where his reputation as a Greek scholar led the classical tutor of his college to select him to translate certain passages from Eustathius for the use of Pope in his translation of Homer. He graduated B.A. in 1719 and M.A. in 1722. In the latter year he published a small volume of Latin verse entitled Lusus Poetici. Having received priest’s orders in 1724, he was in 1726 presented by his college to the vicarage of Swavesey in Cambridgeshire, an appointment which he resigned in 1730 to become preacher of a chapel in New Street, London. In 1731, along with some friends, he began a publication entitled Miscellaneous Observations on Authors Ancient and Modern, which appeared at intervals during two years. In 1737 he was presented to the vicarage of Eastwell in Kent, and in 1751 he became rector of St Dunstan’s-in-the-East. Shortly after becoming chaplain to the bishop of London in 1762, he was appointed to a prebendal stall of St Paul’s, and to the vicarage of Kensington, and in 1764 he was made archdeacon of London. He died at Kensington, September 5, 1770. The principal works of Jortin are Discussions Concerning the Truth of the Christian Religion, 1746; Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, 1751; Life of Erasmus, 2 vols., 1750, 1760, founded on the life by Le Clerc, but containing a large amount of new matter; and Tracts Philological, Critical, and Miscellaneous, 1790. All his works display great learning and some acuteness both of research and criticism, but though written in a lively style they do not bear ...