Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 7.djvu/123

Rh joined to an exact knowledge of the principles of optics. The improvement had been pointed out by Newton, as the most necessary attainment for the perfection of those instruments. In 1736, he had obtained so much distinction by his acquirements, as to be called by queen Caroline to give instructions in mathematics to her second son, the duke of Cumberland. On leaving Edinburgh for this purpose, he deposited 500, which he had already saved from his gains, in the bank of Scotland. In London, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and was much patronized by the earls of Morton and Macclesfield. Towards the end of the year, he returned to Edinburgh, and resumed the usual course of his profession. Three years afterwards, he accompanied the earl of Morton on a progress to his lordship's possessions in Orkney, for the purpose of adjusting the geography of that remote archipelago; while the laird of Macfarlane accompanied the party, as a surveyor of antiquities. After that business had been concluded, Mr Short accompanied the earl to London, where he finally settled, and for some years carried on an extensive practice in the construction of telescopes and other optical instruments. One of the former, containing a reflector of twelve feet focus, was made for lord Thomas Spencer, at six hundred guineas; another of still greater extent, and the largest which had till then been constructed, was made for the king of Spain, at £1200. Mr Short died, June 15, 1768, of mortification in the bowels, leaving a fortune of £20,000.

SIBBALD,, an ingenious inquirer into Scottish literary antiquities, was the son of Mr John Sibbald, farmer at Whitlaw, in Roxburghshire, where he was born in the year 1747, or early in 1748. He was educated at the grammar school of Selkirk, from which Whitlaw is only a few miles distant. He commenced life, by leasing the farm of Newton from Sir Gilbert Elliot of Stobs. Here he pursued various studies, each of which, for the time, seemed to him the most important in the world; till another succeeded, and in its turn absorbed Itis whole attention. One of his favourite pursuits was botany, then little studied by any class of people in Scotland, and particularly by farmers. Owing to the depression which the American war produced in the value of farm stock, Mr Sibbald found his affairs by no means in a prosperous condition; and, accordingly, in May, 1779, he disposed of the whole by auction, and, giving up his lease to the landlord, repaired to Edinburgh, with about a hundred pounds in his pocket, in order to commence a new line of life. A taste for literature, and an acquaintance with Mr Charles Elliot, who was a native of the same district, induced him to enter as a kind of volunteer shopman into the employment of that eminent publisher, with whom he continued about a year. He then purchased the circulating library which had formerly belonged to Allan Ramsay, and, in 1780 or 1781, commenced business as a bookseller in the Parliament Square. It is not unworthy of notice, that Mr Sibbald conducted the library at the time when Sir Walter Scott, then a boy, devoured its contents with the ardour described in one of his autobiographical prefaces. Mr Sibbald carried on business with a degree of spirit and enterprise, beyond the most of his brethren. He was the first to introduce the better order of engravings into Edinburgh, in which department of trade he was for a considerable time eminently successful. Many of these prints were of the mezzotinto kind, and were coloured to resemble paintings. Being viewed in the Scottish capital as altogether the production of metropolitan genius, they were exceedingly well received, and extensively purchased. At length, Mr Sibbald was detected one day in the act of colouring some of them himself; and from that time his trade experienced an evident decline. He had not been long in business, when his talents and acquired knowledge sought an appropriate field of display, in a