Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 6.djvu/294

88 JOHN NAPIER. first prize of the academy of St Luke in the first class of architecture, and was unanimously elected a member of that body. In the course of his travels, he was able, by the minuteness of his research, to discover many points in ancient architecture which no one ever before or ever after remarked, and to illustrate by this means some obscure passages in Vitruvius. On returning to London, a friendless adventurer, the superiority of a plan which he presented, among those of twenty other candidates, for the contemplated Blackfriars’ bridge, gained him the employment of superintending that great public work, which was commenced in 1761. This plan and the duty of superintendence were rewarded, according to agreement, by a salary of £300 a-year, and five per cent, upon all the money expended. So well had he calculated the cost, that the bridge was completed (1765) for the exact sum specified in the estimate, £153,000. As a specimen of bridge architecture, on a large scale, it was long held in the very highest rank; and a learned writer has even pronounced it the most perfect in existence. The mode of centering employed by Mr Mylne, has, in particular, been the theme of much praise.

This eminent architect was afterwards appointed surveyor of St Paul’s cathedral; and he it was who suggested the inscription in that building to the memory of Wren&mdash;“Si monumentum qujeris, circumspice,” an idea so felicitous, that it may safely be described as more generally known, and committed to more memories, than almost any similar thing in existence. Among the buildings erected or altered by him, may be mentioned Rochester cathedral, Greenwich hospital, (of which he was clerk of the works for fifteen years,) King’s Weston, Ardincaple house, and Inverary Castle. He was a man of extensive knowledge in his profession, both in regard to its theory and practice. After a long career of distinguished employment, he died, May 5, 1811, in his seventy-eighth year, at the New River Head, London, where he had long resided as engineer to that company, and was interred in Westminster Abbey, near the tomb of Sir Christopher Wren. By his wife, Miss Mary Home, whom he married in 1770, he had nine children, five of whom survived him. 

, of Merchiston, near Edinburgh, the celebrated inventor of the logarithms, was born in the year 1550. He was descended from an ancient race of land proprietors in Stirlingshire and Dumbartonshire. His father, Sir Alexander Napier of Edinbellie, in the former county, and Merchiston, in the county of Edinburgh, was master of the mint to James VI., and was only sixteen years of age when the subject of this memoir was born. The mother of the inventor of the logarithms was Janet, only daughter of Sir Francis Bothwell, a lord of session, and sister of Adam, bishop of Orkney. There is a prevalent notion that the inventor of the logarithms was a nobleman: this has arisen from his styling himself, in one of his title pages, Baro Merchistonii; in reality, this implied baron in the sense of a superior of a barony, or what in England would be called lord of a manor. Napier was simply laird of Merchiston&mdash;a class who in Scotland sat in parliament under the denomination of the lesser barons.

Napier was educated at St Salvator’s college, in the university of St Andrews which he entered in 1562. He afterwards travelled on the continent, probably to improve himself by intercourse with learned and scientific men. Nothing