Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 27.djvu/159

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Holland
153
Holland

ginall glosse and other briefe annotations thereupon’ (London, for Matthew Lownes, 1606, fol.), dedicated to the wife of John, first lord Harington [q. v.] A reprint, edited by Charles Whibley, appeared in ‘Tudor Translations,’ 1899 (2 vols.). To the corporation of Coventry Holland dedicated his ‘Roman Historie … of Ammianus Marcellinus’ (London, by Adam Islip, 1609, fol.). In 1610 Holland's English translation of Camden's ‘Britannia’ was published, again in folio, by George Bishop. Camden corrected the proof-sheets, and Holland laid before him his difficulties as the work proceeded. Holland, in an extant letter to Camden, dated from Coventry, 25 Aug. 1609 (Brit. Mus. MS. Cotton. Jul. cv. 28), calls him his ‘loving and affectionate friend,’ and invites his opinion as to the meaning of many phrases. In 1637 Holland's son Henry published a new edition of the translation, and, according to Nicolson and Gough, many injurious alterations were introduced. But Hearne asserts that the second edition ‘was revised and approved of, long before it went to the press, by Mr. Camden himself’ (Reliquiæ Hearnianæ, ed. Bliss, ii. 191). John Davies of Hereford supplied the new edition with verses in Holland's praise; and another panegyrist, Thomas Merial, M.A., states that the work was begun at the wish of Elizabeth, wife of Sir Thomas Berkeley, and mother of Holland's pupil, George, lord Berkeley. Holland's latest large undertaking was an English rendering of Xenophon's ‘Cyrupædia, or the Institution and Life of Cyrus, King of Persians.’ Although not published till 1632 (London, for Robert Allot, fol.), it was completed 8 Feb. 1620–1, and was recast 5 April 1629. The labour of seeing the volume through the press was borne by Henry Holland, who dedicated it to Charles I. Thomas Farnaby and Thomas Heywood (among others) supply commendatory verses. Heywood supplies two sets, one addressed to Henry Holland. After his father's death, Henry issued the doctor's Latin rendering of Bauderon's French ‘Pharmacopœia,’ with Dubois's ‘Observations’ (London, Edward Griffin, at the expense of Richard Whitaker, 1639, fol.), and dedicated it to the president and fellows of the London College of Physicians. Alexander Reid, M.D., supplied a recommendatory letter. A manuscript copy of Holland's rendering belonged to Mr. Thomas Sharp of Coventry in 1871. In 1649 Henry Holland also prepared for the press, with appendices by various writers, ‘Regimen Sanitatis Salerni, or the Schoole of Salernes Regiment of Health … dedicated unto the late high and mighty King of England from that University. … Reviewed, corrected, and inlarged, with a Commentary by P. H., Dr in Physicke, deceased,’ London, 1649, 4to. Other translations of the work had already been published in 1579 and 1607. Henry Holland dedicated his father's translation to Sir Simonds D'Ewes; it was reprinted in Sir John Sinclair's ‘Code of Health and Longevity’ (1806), iii. 3–47.

Holland is also credited with a translation into Latin for continental use of Speed's ‘Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine,’ and with ‘Paralipomena,’ a supplement to Thomasius's ‘Dictionarium,’ Cambridge, 1615, 4to. A manuscript of Euclid's ‘Harmonics’—a beautiful specimen of Greek caligraphy—written by Holland, is in the library of the free school at Coventry. Baskerville borrowed it when preparing his Greek fount. In the lower panel of the engraved title-page to Holland's translation of Xenophon's ‘Cyrupædia’ is a fine portrait of the translator, ‘ætatis svæ 80.’

Holland's translations are faithful and readable. Fuller designates him the ‘translator generall in his age,’ and asserts that ‘these books alone of his turning into English will make a country gentleman a competent library.’ ‘Dr. Holland,’ writes Hearne, ‘had a most admirable knack in translating books … several of the most obscure books being translated by him, one of which was Plutarch's “Morals”’ (Reliq. Hearn. ii. 191). A worthless epigram on Holland's voluminousness, which Fuller quotes, seems to have first appeared in ‘A Banquet of Jeasts’ (1630), absurdly assigned to Shakespeare (Collier, Bibl. Cat. ii. 337–8). Almost all his translations were issued in heavy folio volumes. Pope, in the ‘Dunciad,’ bk. i., describes ‘the groaning shelves’ bending under the weight of his works. Southey says that ‘Philemon, … for the service which he rendered to his contemporaries and to his countrymen, deserves to be called the best of the Hollands.’

[Colvile's Warwickshire Worthies, pp. 413 sq.; Thomas Sharp's Illustrative Papers of the History and Antiquities of the City of Coventry, 1871, reprinted by W. G. Fretton, pp. 178 sq.; Dugdale's Warwickshire, ed. Thomas, i. 174–5; Fuller's Worthies; Wood's Fasti Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 233; Aubrey's Lives, in Letters from the Bodleian, ii. 396; Brit. Mus. Cat.]

S. L.

HOLLAND, PHILIP (1721–1789), nonconformist divine, eldest son of Thomas Holland, was born at Wem, Shropshire, in 1721. His grandfather, Thomas Holland (d. 1675, aged 57), had been a member of the first presbyterian classis of Lancashire, and was ejected from Blackley Chapel, Lancashire, by the Uniformity Act. His father, Thomas Holland, a pupil of James Coningham [q. v.],