Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Burgess, Henry
BURGESS, HENRY, LL.D. (1808–1886), divine, born in 1808, was educated in the Dissenting College at Stepney, where he obtained a high standing in Hebrew and classical learning. After ministering to a nonconformist congregation, he was ordained deacon in 1850 and priest in 1861 by Dr. Lee, bishop of Manchester. He took the degree of LL.D, at Glasgow University in 1851 and that of Ph.D. at the university of Göttingen in the following year. He held the perpetual curacy of Clifton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, from 1854 to 1861, when he was appointed by the lord chancellor to the vicarage of St. Andrew, Whittlesea, Cambridgeshire, in recognition of his services to theological learning. That benefice he held till his death on 10 Feb. 1886.
His principal works are: 1. A translation from the Syriac language of the ‘Metrical Hymns and Homilies of St. Ephrem Syrus, with Philological Notes and Dissertations on the Syrian Metrical Church Literature,' 2 vols. 1835. 2. 'The Country Miscellany,' 2 vols. 1836-7. 3. 'Poems,' 1850, dedicated to the Marchioness of Bute. 4. Translation of the 'Festal Letters of St. Athanasius,' 1852, a work which, after being long lost in the original Greek, was recovered in an ancient Syriac version, and edited for the Oxford 'Library of the Fathers' by the Rev. H.G. Williams. 5. 'The Reformed Church of England in its Principles and their legitimate Development,' 1869. 6. 'Essays, Biblical and Ecclesiastical, relating chiefly to the Authority and Interpretation of the Holy Scriptures.' 7. 'The Art of Preaching and the Composition of Sermons,' 1881. He prepared the second edition of Kitto's 'Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature,' and he was for some years editor of the 'Clerical Journal' (1854-68) and the 'Journal of Sacred Literature.'
[Times, 16 Feb. 1886; Men of the Time (1884), 189; Crockford's Clerical Directory (1882), 161.]