KIPPIS, Andrew (1725-1795), a learned and laborious compiler, was born at Nottingham, March 28, 1725. From school at Sleaford in Lincolnshire he passed at the age of sixteen to spend a five years’ course in the Dissenting academy at Northampton, of which Dr Doddridge was then president. In 1746 Kippis became minister of a church at Boston; in 1750 he removed to Dorking in Surrey; and in 1753 he became pastor of a dissenting congregation at Westminster, where he remained till his death on 8th October 1795. Kippis took a prominent part in the affairs of the body with which he was connected. From 1763 till 1784 he was classical and philological tutor in Coward’s training college; and when another institution of the same kind was opened at Hackney he was prevailed upon, somewhat against his will, to serve as tutor there for a few years. In 1767 he received the degree of D.D. from Edinburgh university; in 1778 he was elected a fellow of the Antiquarian Society, and a fellow of the Royal Society in 1779. He left a reputation for piety, learning, and active virtue....
Kippis was a very voluminous writer. He contributed largely to The Gentleman’s Magazine, The Monthly Review, and The Library ; and he had a good deal to do with the establishment and conduct of The New Annual Register. He published also a number of sermons and occasional pamphlets; and he prefixed a life of the author to a collected edition of Dr Nathaniel Lardner’s Works (11 vols. 8vo, 1788). He wrote a life of Dr Doddridge, also, which is prefixed to Doddridge’s Exposition of the New Testament (6 vols. 8vo, 1792). His chief work is his edition of the Biographia Britannica, of which, however, he only lived to publish 5 vols, (folio, 1778-1793). Many new lives were inserted, written for the most part by the editor himself; and extensive additions and corrections were made. These last were given in the form of footnotes to the original text,—a plan which often gives the work the air of a long controversy, and swelled it beyond reasonable bounds. As a monument of the painstaking erudition of the editor the work is interesting; and as a mere storehouse of facts it possesses a genuine value. Kippis’s Life and Voyages of Captain James Cook was reprinted from this book, 4to, 1788. See notice by A. Rees, D.D.. in The New Annual Register for 1795.
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