His work Gerania; a New Discovery of a Little Sort of People, anciently discoursed of, called Pygmies (1675) was an Utopian romance.

Educated at Christ's Hospital and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, he was chosen in 1695 as Regius Professor of Greek, a language which he wrote and spoke with facility.

One of his early publications was Gerania; a New Discovery of a Little Sort of People, anciently discoursed of, called Pygmies (1675), a whimsical sketch, to which Swift's Voyage to Lilliput may owe something.

Among his other works is a History of that Most Victorious Monarch Edward III (1688), an epic of over 900 pages, which inserts elaborate speeches into the narrative.

These combined first-person adventure narratives with either "satirical social observation" or perceptions of ideal human behaviour in remote lands, following a tradition rooted in the Utopia (1516) of Thomas More, which found prominent manifestations in The Blazing World (1666) of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and The Isle of Pines of Henry Neville.