Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 14.djvu/398

 Academy (chiefly), at the British Institution, and at the Society of British Artists. As an artist he possessed powers of considerable range, but these appear to most advantage in his exquisite water-colour copies, in which, while not neglecting details, he caught the spirit of each particular master.

He died in Osnaburgh Street, Regent's Park, London, 1 Jan. 1847. He was independent in character, courteous in manners, and ardent in the pursuit of art, and by patient industry he secured an honourable position. There are two studies by him in water-colours, ‘A Fisherman’ and ‘A Man holding a Book,’ in the South Kensington Museum. Some miniatures of the Stanley family and a drawing from life in water-colours of John Flaxman, the sculptor, were in the Loan Exhibition of Portrait Miniatures at South Kensington in 1865. Portraits in oil of George, third earl of Egremont; Edward, thirteenth earl of Derby; and James Scarlett, first lord Abinger, were in the National Portrait Exhibition of 1868.



DERHAM, SAMUEL (1655–1689), physician, was born in 1655 at Weston, near Campden, Gloucestershire, being the son of William Derham of that place. He entered as a student of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, in Michaelmas term 1672, when he was seventeen years old. He took the degree of B.A. on 13 June 1676, that of M.A. on 3 May 1679, was made M.B. on 9 Feb. 1681, and passed M.D. on 18 Jan. 1687. He began the practice of medicine before he attained to the last-named honour, and in 1685 distinguished himself by publishing an account of the chalybeate waters at Ilmington in Warwickshire, which he strongly and successfully recommended as a cure for scrofulous complaints. The place became in consequence a fashionable health resort, and Lord Capell, the landowner there, encouraged visitors by presenting the land surrounding the well to the public. Derham seemed on the way to eminence in his profession when he was suddenly cut off, in the prime of his life, by small-pox, dying in his house at Oxford on 26 Aug. 1689. He was buried in his parish church, St. Michael's, at the upper end of the north chancel.

The title of the book he published is: ‘Hydrologia Philosophica; or, an Account of Ilmington Waters in Warwickshire, with directions for drinking of the same,’ 8vo, Oxford, 1685. Annexed to this publication is a treatise entitled ‘Experimental Observations touching the original of Compound Bodies.’



DERHAM, WILLIAM (1657–1735), divine, was born at Stoulton, near Worcester, on 26 Nov. 1657. He was educated at Blackley grammar school, and on 14 May 1675 admitted to Trinity College, Oxford. He graduated B.A. in January 1678–9. [q. v.], president of his college, recommended him to Seth Ward, bishop of Salisbury, through whose interest he became chaplain to the dowager Lady Grey of Werke. He was ordained deacon in 1681, and priest in 1682. In 1682 he was presented by Mr. Neville to the vicarage of Wargrave, and on 31 Aug. 1689, by Mrs. Bray, to the vicarage of Upminster, Essex. Here he lived quietly, cultivating his tastes for natural history and mechanics. He became acquainted with his scientific contemporaries, and in 1702 was elected fellow of the Royal Society, to whose ‘Transactions’ he contributed a number of papers from 1697 to 1729, treating of observations of the barometer and the weather, of the great storm of 1703, the habits of the deathwatch and of wasps, of the migration of birds, of the will of the wisp, and other subjects, which would have interested White of Selborne. His later papers include some astronomical remarks. In 1696 he had published ‘The Artificial Clockmaker, a Treatise of Watch and Clock work, showing to the meanest capacities the art of calculating numbers to all sorts of movements … with the Ancient and Modern History of Clockwork …’ (4th edition in 1734). His studies thus fitted him admirably for the Boyle lectures, which he delivered in 1711 and 1712, and published in 1713 as ‘Physico-Theology, or a Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God from his Works of Creation.’ This book reached a twelfth edition in 1754 (French translation 1732, Swedish 1736, German 1750). It shows much reading as well as ingenious observation, and is a statement of the argument from final causes, of which Paley's ‘Natural Theology’ is the most popular exposition. Paley used it (see, e.g., his references to the vision of birds, the drum of the ear, the eye-socket, and the digestive apparatus) and occasionally refers to it. In 1715 Derham published ‘Astro-Theology, or a Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God from a Survey of the Heavens,’ a