Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 4.djvu/261

Rh that subterraneous fires will be allowed to have had a greater share in the formation of mountains, islands, and even tracts of land, than has hitherto been suspected." Many men of eminence at that time visited Sir William Hamilton, and marked the progress of his discoveries, and among the rest Monsieur Saussure, professor of natural history at Geneva, who accompanied him in his investigations, and acceded to the arguments he derived from them. During the course of his communications to the Royal Society, it was the fortune of the author to have an opportunity of witnessing Vesuvius in eruption.

In October, 1767, occurred the eruption which is considered to have been the twenty-seventh from that which in the days of Titus destroyed Herculaneum and Pompei. The mountain was visited by Hamilton and a party of his friends during this interesting scene, which has afforded material for one of the most graphic of his communications. But a grander scene of devastation attracted his attention in October, 1779, when the unfortunate inhabitants of Ottaiano had reason to dread the fate described by Pliny. Of this memorable eruption our author transmitted an account to Sir Joseph Banks, which he afterwards published as a supplement to his *' Campi Phlegra3i."

Previously to the period of the last event we have mentioned, the subject of our memoir was connected with the preparation of another great work, for which the world has incurred to him a debt of gratitude. He had made a vast collection of Etruscan antiquities vases, statues, and fresco paintings, partly dug from the earth, and partly purchased from the museums of the decayed nobility, among which was that great collection now deposited in the British museum, which had belonged to the senatorial house of Porcinari. Of the most precious of these remains of antiquity, Hamilton allowed the adventurer D'Hancerville, to publish illustrated plates, liberally allowing the artist to appropriate the whole profits of the work. " Long since," he says " Mr Hamilton had taken pleasure in collecting those precious monuments, and had afterwards trusted them to him for publication, requiring only some elegance in the execution, and the condition, that the work should appear under the auspices of his Britannic majesty." The work accordingly was published at Naples, under the title of "Antiquites Etrusques, Greques, et Romaines." The abbe Winckelman mentions, that two volumes of this work were published in 17G5, and two others the year following. Along with the author of a notice of Sir William Hamilton's Life, which appeared in Baldwin's Literary Journal, we have been unable to discover a copy of the two former volumes of this work, or to find any reference to them on which we can repose trust, nor do we perceive that the two latter volumes bear the marks of being a continuation, and neither of the after editions of Paris, 1787, and Florence, 1801 and 1808, which might have informed us on this subject, are at present accessible to us. The two volumes we have mentioned as having seen, contain general remarks on the subjects of the plates, in English and French, which both the imaginative matter, and the language, show to have been translated from the latter language into the former. The plates, by far the most valuable part of the work, introduced a new spirit into the depiction of the useful remains of antiquity, which enabled the artist who wished to imitate them, to have as correct an idea of the labours of the ancients, as if the originals were before him. The terra-cotta vases predominate; some of these are votive offerings others have been adapted for use. A general view of the form of each is given, with a measurement, along with which there is a distinct fac-simile of the paintings which so frequently occur on these beautiful pieces of pottery; the engraving is bold and accurate, and the colouring true to the original. This work has been the means of adding the bold genius of classic taste to modern accuracy and skill in workmanship. From the painter