Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 33.djvu/142

Rh Pock,’ 1st edit. 4to, 1801 (privately printed); 2nd edit. 8vo, 1801. He published also twenty-seven papers in the ‘Memoirs,’ 1792–1805, and the ‘Transactions of the Medical Society of London,’ 1810. The most important observation is that on the effects of alcoholic excess on the nervous system in women, contained in a paper, ‘Some Remarks on the Effects of Lignum Quassiæ Amaræ’ (Memoirs, vol. i.), and repeated in a pamphlet ‘On the Effects of Hard Drinking,’ 4to, 1791. He also wrote in other medical journals, and one paper of no moment in the ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ 1786.

II. His biographical writings were: ‘Life of John Fothergill,’ in his ‘Works’ (edited by Lettsom, 3 vols. 8vo, 1783); one vol. 4to, 1784. The fourth edition of the ‘Memoirs,’ 8vo, 1786, contains also memoirs of William Cuming, George Cleghorn, Alexander Russell, and Peter Collinson. He wrote also memoirs of William Hewson (‘Trans. Med. Soc.’ vol. i. pt. i.), of James Johnstone (ib. vol. i. pt. ii.), and of Edward Jenner (oration at Medical Society, 8 March 1804); obituary notice of Baron Dimsdale (anonymous, in ‘European Magazine,’ August 1802); ‘Recollections of Dr. Rush,’ 8vo, London, 1815.

III. Lettsom was a frequent contributor to the ‘Gentleman's Magazine,’ either in his own name or using a pseudonym, such as ‘One of the Faculty,’ ‘J. C. Mottles,’ &c., and also to the ‘Monthly Ledger,’ a quaker magazine, there also using various signatures. Many of these productions were collected and published with the title ‘Hints designed to Promote Beneficence, Temperance, and Medical Science,’ 3 vols. 8vo, 1801. He carried on a copious correspondence with scientific men and doctors in various parts, much of which is printed in Pettigrew's ‘Life.’ Lettsom's own letters are lively and interesting, containing vivid descriptions of contemporaries.

Of Lettsom's manuscripts the library of the Medical Society contains a quarto volume of his notes of Fordyce's ‘Lectures on Medicine and Materia Medica;’ and another containing notes on the ‘Practice of Physick,’ probably Cullen's lectures at Edinburgh. The Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society possesses six vols. 4to of ‘Materia Medica, imitated after the manner of Dr. Francis Home,’ founded apparently on Home's lectures at Edinburgh, 1768–9.

The Medical Society possesses an interesting oil painting by Medley of its early members, in which Lettsom occupies a prominent place, and another portrait of him in oils. There is an engraved portrait by W. Skelton, 1817, in Pettigrew's ‘Life,’ one by Holloway, ad vivum, in Nichols's ‘Literary Illustrations,’ ii. 657, and another by Holloway in ‘European Magazine,’ December 1876.

Lettsom's eldest grandson, William Nanson Lettsom (1796–1865), man of letters, was son of John Miers Lettsom, M.D., by Rachel, daughter of William Nanson, and was born 4 Feb. 1796. He passed from Eton to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1818 and M.A. in 1822, and won the prizes for the Latin ode and two epigrams in 1816, and that for the ode again in 1817. Possessed of ample means, he devoted his life to a study of literature, both ancient and modern. He published an able translation of the ‘Nibelungenlied’ with the title ‘The Fall of the Nebelungers; otherwise the book of Kriemhild’ in 1850, and carefully edited from the author's manuscripts William Sidney Walker's ‘Shakespeare's Versification’ (1854) and his ‘Critical Examination of the Text of Shakespeare’ (1860). His friend, Alexander Dyce [q. v.], acknowledged much aid from Lettsom in his preparation of his edition of ‘Shakespeare.’ Lettsom also interested himself in textual criticism of the New Testament. He died on 3 Sept. 1865 at Westbourne Park, Paddington (Gent. Mag. 1865, ii. 790–1). 

LEVEN,. [See, first , 1580–1661; and , third , 1660–1728.] LEVENS, PETER (fl. 1587), scholar and medical writer, was born ‘at or near Eske in Yorkshire,’ and proceeded to Oxford in 1552, apparently to Magdalen College. He was admitted B.A. 6 July 1556, was elected probationer-fellow of Magdalen ‘into a Yorkshire place,’ 19 Jan. 1557, and became ‘true and perpetual fellow,’ January 1559. He supplicated for M.A. February 1559–60, but the date of his admission is not known. He subsequently ‘taught a grammar school and practised physic.’ Wood styles him ‘an eminent physician.’

He published: 1. ‘Manipulus Vocabulorum. A Dictionarie of English and Latine wordes, set forthe in suche order, as none heretofore hath ben, the Englishe going before the Latine, necessary not onely for Scholers that want varietie of words, but also for such as use to write in English