CURRENT LITERATURE.
Life of Ambrose Bonwicke. Edited by John E. B. Mayor. (Daighton and Boll ; Bell and Daldy.)—Ambrose Bonwicke was a young student of St. John's College, Cambridge. The name will be familiar to those who are acquainted with the history of the Non-jurors. It was borne by the author of this memoir, who was indeed the father of the young man whose great promise and early death it records. The elder Bonwicke was Head Master of Merchant Taylors' School, London, and was ejected from that office on account of non-juring scruples. The younger followed in his father's footsteps. He had attained the position of head monitor, and, there being a vacancy at St. John's, Oxford, was thought certain of his fellowship. But it had been observed that he had avoided reading the school prayers in his usual turn. A junior informed the Company of the circumstances, and the young scholar when questioned declared that ho could not read the coiled for the King. He accordingly lost his election, and was sent to St. John's, Cambridge. Here he pursued a course of study and as- ceticism, both of them followed to an excess which seems to have shortened his life. The picture of the devout student's life at the University is curious and interesting. Among the notable details is young Bonwicke's own account of his studies. In the course of eleven months he read the Periegesis of Dionysiva (not often read now-a- days, we fancy, by Cambridge undergraduates), the first nine books of Virgil's 2Eneid, .2Elian, Terence, a great part of Seneca (the philosopher), Pindar's Olympic Odes and four of the Pythian, tho lives of the first three Emperors in Suetonius, five books of Pliny's Epistles, Tacitus's '‘ Dialogus do Claris Oratoribus," and sundry books of logic and history. There is no mention made here or elsewhere of mathematics. Mr. Mayor has added a mass of notes, full as usual of the learning so curiously varied, for which he is famous.
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