Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/69

 Sector altered, and other scales added, with the description and use thereof,' an improvement of Gunter's sector, and printed in the fourth and fifth editions of his 'Works,' 4to, 1662 and 1673, by William Leybourn, who in the latter edition corrected some mistakes which had appeared in the former from Foster's own manuscript. 7. 'The Description and Use of the Nocturnal; with the Addition of a Ruler, shewing the Measures of Inches and other Parts of most Countries, compared with our English ones,' 4to [London? 1685?]. Foster left numerous manuscript treatises in addition to those printed by his friends. Of these two were in the possession of William Jones, F.R.S., in the middle of the last century: 1. 'The Uses of a General Quadrant,' fol. 2. 'Select Uses of the Quadrant,' 8vo, dated 1649.

[Ward's Lives of the Gresham Professors, with manuscript notes by the author, in Brit. Mus. i. 85-7; Brit. Mus. Cat., under 'Forster' and 'Foster;' Wood's Athenae Oxon. (Bliss), ii. 405406, iii. 327.]  FOSTER, THOMAS (1798–1826), painter, a native of Ireland, came to England at the age of fifteen or sixteen, and in 1818 became a student of the Royal Academy at Somerset House. He was patronised by the Right Hon. John Wilson Croker [q. v.], and painted numerous portraits of his family. In 1819 he exhibited at the Royal Academy ‘Portraits of Miss and Master Croker and a favourite dog.’ In 1820 he exhibited a portrait of the French general Dumouriez in his eighty-second year. Foster was a frequent visitor at the studio of J. Nollekens, R.A. [q. v.], the sculptor, where he used to model from antique heads, and was also on intimate terms with Sir Thomas Lawrence, several of whose portraits he copied for Croker. He painted portraits of H. R. Bishop [q. v.], the musician, which was engraved, and of Colonel Phillips (who was with Captain Cook at the time of his death), and showed rapid advancement in the art. In 1822 he exhibited ‘Mazeppa,’ a picture which showed considerable genius; in 1823, ‘Domestic Quarrels;’ and in 1825 ‘Paul and Virginia previous to their separation,’ all of which, besides portraits, he exhibited at the Royal Academy. Foster was considered by his friends to be a rising painter; he was good-looking, well connected, and popular in society, which occupied a good deal of his time. Croker gave him a commission to paint the scene at Carlton House when Louis XVIII received the order of the Garter, and for this ambitious subject he made numerous studies. In March 1826 he died by his own hand at an hotel in Piccadilly, leaving a letter stating that his friends had deserted him, and that he was tired of life. It is uncertain whether this act was prompted by the want of interest he felt in the subject of his picture, or by a hopeless attachment to a young lady whose portrait he was painting. He was in his twenty-ninth year. Foster painted numerous portraits of himself, and sat to Northcote for one of the murderers in his ‘Burial of the Princes in the Tower.’ According to Northcote, Foster was good-looking, good-natured, and a wit, all qualities which would have prevented him from becoming a great artist.

[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Arnold's Library of the Fine Arts, ii. 207; Hazlitt's Conversations of James Northcote; Royal Academy Catalogues.] 

FOSTER, THOMAS CAMPBELL (1813–1882), legal writer, son of John Foster of Leeds, born in 1813, was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1846, and went the northern and afterwards the north-eastern circuit. He stood as a liberal-conservative for Sheffield in 1867, but was unsuccessful. In 1868 he was appointed revising barrister for the West Riding boroughs. He resigned this appointment in 1875, upon being made queen's counsel and bencher of his inn. He was made recorder of Warwick in 1874. He was leading counsel for the crown at the trial of the murderer Charles Peace at Leeds. Foster was in bad health for a considerable time before his death, which took place at Orsett Terrace, Hyde Park, 1 July 1882. Foster wrote: 1. ‘Plain Instructions for the Attainment of an Improved, Complete, and Practical System of Shorthand,’ 1838. 2. ‘Letters on the Condition of the People of Ireland. Reprinted, with additions, from the “Times,”’ 1846. 3. ‘A Review of the Law relating to Marriages within the Prohibited Degrees of Affinity, and of the Canons and Social Considerations by which that Law is supposed to be Justified,’ 1847. 4. ‘A Treatise on the Writ of Scire Facias,’ 1851. 5. ‘Reports of Cases decided at Nisi Prius and at the Crown Side on Circuit, and Select Decisions at Chambers’ (with N. F. Finlason), 1858–1867.

[Times, 3 July 1882, p. 6; Brit. Mus. Cat.] 

FOSTER, WALTER (fl. 1652), mathematician, elder brother of Samuel Foster [q. v.], was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow. He took the two degrees in arts, B.A. in 1617, M.A. in 1621, and commenced B.D. in 1628. Dr. Samuel Ward, in a letter