Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 34.djvu/218

 mont's phrase, applied to him in 1700—‘a good Englishman and a man of public spirit’ (Cal. State Papers, Treasury Ser., ii. 434). The family arms with the bezants or, and the motto ‘Ways and Means’ (a phrase the origination of which is claimed for Lowndes), dates from his time.



LOWNDES, WILLIAM THOMAS (d. 1843), bibliographer, son of William Lowndes, a well-known bookseller in the Strand, London, was born about 1798. His grandfather, also a bookseller, was supposed to be the original of Briggs in Miss Burney's ‘Cecilia.’ In 1820 he began to compile his chief and valuable work, ‘The Bibliographer's Manual,’ the first edition of which, published in four volumes by Pickering, is dated 1 Jan. 1834. Though the first systematic work of its kind in England, it brought Lowndes neither notice nor money. He passed the latter part of his life in drudgery and complete poverty, acting, in his last years, as cataloguer to [q. v.], who re-edited his ‘Manual’ in four volumes, 1857–64. In 1839 he published parts i–v. of ‘The British Librarian,’ designed to supplement the defective treatment of theology in the ‘Manual;’ pt. vii. was, through illness, issued incomplete; pt. ix. was delayed by illness and failing sight; pt. xi., the last issued, in which the subject of class I, ‘Religion and its History,’ is still unfinished, was also delayed, not appearing till 1842. But his health was broken, and his mind deranged. He died on 31 July 1843. He left a widow and two children.



LOWRIE, alias, WILLIAM (d. 1700?), tutor of Blackwood. [See .]

LOWRY, JOHN (1769–1850), mathematician, a native of Cumberland, was for some time an excise officer at Solihull, near Birmingham, but in 1804 he obtained an appointment as master of arithmetic in the new military college at Great Marlow. He held this post until 30 June 1840, when failing sight compelled him to resign on a pension. About 1846 he became totally blind. He died at Pimlico, London, on 3 Jan. 1850, aged 80. Lowry was one of the earliest and most frequent contributors to Thomas Leybourn's ‘Mathematical Repository’ (1799 to 1819). He was the author of a tract on spherical trigonometry appended to the second volume of Dalby's ‘Course of Mathematics,’ the text-book formerly in use at Sandhurst (1805); and the writer of his obituary in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ claims for him also the treatises on arithmetic and algebra in the same work.



LOWRY, JOSEPH WILSON (1803–1879), engraver, born in London on 7 Oct. 1803, was the only son of [q. v.] by his second wife, Rebecca Delvalle. He received his artistic training from his father, and from both parents inherited a strong taste for natural science and mathematics. As an engraver he devoted himself wholly to scientific subjects, and became one of the ablest illustrators of works of that class. Lowry's first employment was upon the ‘Encyclopædia Metropolitana,’ and later he executed a series of plates of London Bridge for Sir John Rennie. Other important works on which he was engaged were Phillips's ‘Geology of Yorkshire,’ 1835, Scott Russell's great treatise on ‘Naval Architecture,’ 1865, ‘Weale's Scientific Series,’ and the ‘Journals’ of the Institute of Naval Architects and the Royal Geographical Society. He also engraved a series of illustrations of British fossils, issued by the Christian Knowledge Society, and many excellent maps, including the set published by the ‘Dispatch’ newspaper.

Lowry was a student of geology, and early in life constructed with his friend Professor