Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 18.djvu/81

 education was very rudimentary. At the age of eleven he was apprenticed on board one of the small trading vessels that visited his native town. His treatment was so bad that he determined to run away. He went to Aberdare, and worked in a coal-mine. From here he sent a letter to his mother, written in verse (his first attempt), apprising her of his whereabouts. When about fifteen he devoted his leisure hours to music, and attracted public attention as a singer. Shortly after this he competed successfully at a small eisteddfod, held at the chapel where he was a member, for the best poem on ‘Humility.’ This brought him into public notice, and henceforth his name was constantly in the local papers and in connection with eisteddfodau, where he won no fewer than twenty prizes. All this time he worked as a common collier. His last six years were spent in constant battle first with dyspepsia, and then with consumption. He died 29 April 1865.

His poems were characterised by pathos and pleasantry, and had a charm that always touched his countrymen. His poetical works were collected and arranged by Dafydd Morganwg, and published in 1866, small 8vo (224 pp.), with a brief memoir from the pen of Mr. Howel Williams, eight hundred copies having been subscribed for beforehand.

[Memoir as above.] 

EVANS, THOMAS SIMPSON (1777–1818), mathematician, eldest son of the Rev. Lewis Evans (1755–1827) [q. v.], by his wife, Ann Norman, was baptised in August 1777. He was named after Thomas Simpson, the mathematician. In or about 1797 he appears to have taken charge of a private observatory at Blackheath belonging to William Larkins, formerly accountant-general to the East India Company at Bengal. After the death of Larkins, 24 April 1800 (Gent. Mag. vol. lxx. pt. i. p. 398), he was taken on as an assistant by Nevil Maskelyne [q. v.] at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, but resigned the post in 1805. In that year, or perhaps in 1803, he was appointed mathematical master under his father at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. Here he continued until 1810, when he accepted the mastership of the mathematical school at New Charlton, near Woolwich, which office he vacated in 1813 to become master of the mathematics at Christ's Hospital, London. His attainments won for him the degree of LL.D. (from what university is not known) and the fellowship of the Linnean Society. He died 28 Oct. 1818, aged 41 (ib. vol. lxxxviii. pt. ii. p. 475). By his marriage in 1797 to Deborah, daughter of John Mascall of Ashford, Kent, he had five children: Thomas Simpson Evans (1798–1880), vicar of St. Leonard's, Shoreditch; Aspasia Evans (1799–1876), a spinster; Herbert Norman Evans, M.D. (1802–1877), a great book collector; Arthur Benoni Evans (d. 1838); and Lewis Evans (1815–1869), head-master of Sandbach Free Grammar School, Cheshire. Evans left a completed translation of Antonio Cagnoli's ‘Trigonometria piana e sferica,’ besides other translations from foreign scientific works and a vast collection of unfinished papers in several branches of philosophy. He also contributed some articles to the ‘Philosophical Magazine,’ among which may be mentioned ‘Problems on the Reduction of Angles’ (vol. xxviii.); ‘An Abridgment of the Life of Julien Le Roy, the Watchmaker, by his Son’ (vol. xxxi.); ‘A Short Account of Improvements gradually made in determining the Astronomic Refraction’ (vol. xxxvi.); ‘Historical Memoranda respecting Experiments intended to ascertain the Calorific Powers of the different Prismatic Rays’ (vol. xlv.); ‘On the Laws of Terrestrial Magnetism in different Latitudes’ (vol. xlix.). His library was considered one of the most valuable collections of mathematical and philosophical works in the kingdom.

[Information from John Evans, esq., F.R.S.; Royal Kalendars; Foster's Alumni Oxon. (1715–1886), sub voce.] 

EVANS, WILLIAM (d. 1720?), presbyterian divine, was educated at the college at Ystradwalter, then under the presidency of the Rev. Rees Prytherch. He was ordained at Pencader, near Carmarthen, in 1688, and continued pastor there for fifteen years. In 1703 he removed to Carmarthen to become pastor of the presbyterian congregation, and received in his house students for the christian ministry. He has been regarded as the founder of the Welsh Academy, from the fact that the education of divinity students first assumed under him a collegiate form. He was patronised both by the London funds and by the liberality of wealthy dissenters. Dr. Daniel Williams bequeathed a sum of money towards his support, and this has been continued to his successors to this day. He is said to have been a man of superior attainments as a scholar and divine, and to have devoted himself with great diligence and exemplary fortitude to the discharge of his professional duties in circumstances of difficulty and danger. He is supposed to have discontinued his labours in 1718, and he died in 1720. 