Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 34.djvu/363

 Sebastopol on 18 June, and died in the hospital at Therapia on 23 June. The elder daughter married Baron von Wurtzburg of Bavaria; the younger married Henry Granville Fitzalan Howard, fourteenth Duke of Norfolk [q. v.]

Lyons was considered to be strikingly like the great admiral, Lord Nelson. ‘He had,’ says the writer in the ‘Times,’ ‘the same complexion, the same profusion of grey, inclining to white hair, the same eager and half melancholy look.’ He himself was quite conscious of the likeness, and not averse— it used to be said—to hearing it spoken of. A good portrait was lent by his grandson, the present Duke of Norfolk, to the Naval Exhibition of 1891.

 LYONS, ISRAEL, the elder (d. 1770), hebraist, was a Polish Jew who settled at Cambridge, where he resided nearly forty years. He earned his livelihood by keeping a silversmith's shop, and giving instruction in the Hebrew language to members of the university. The antiquary Cole notes that in 1732 Lyons lived in a lane at the Great Bridge Foot, called the Pond Yards, but afterwards removed to a house in St. John's Lane, near the corner of Green Street. In 1769 he was occupying the corner house of the Regent Walk. He died on 19 Aug. 1770. ‘What is extraordinary,’ says Cole, ‘this Jew desired to be buried in Great St. Mary's churchyard in Cambridge, and was accordingly carried thither,’ and ‘his daughter Judith read some form of interment service over his grave.’ According to the same authority he, his son, and daughter were often fighting together, and the Jews in Cambridge regarded him as unorthodox. Bowtell states that the daughter was a sensible and ingenious woman, but took to the mean practice of fortune-telling, and died a pauper in All Saints parish, Cambridge, where she was buried on 21 April 1795. Lyons was the author of: 1. ‘The Scholar's Instructor: an Hebrew Grammar, with points,’ Cambridge, 1735, 8vo; 2nd edit. Cambridge, 1757, 8vo; 3rd and 4th editions, revised and corrected by Henry Jacob, London, 1810 and 1823, 8vo. 2. ‘An Hebrew Grammar, collected chiefly from those of Mr. I. Lyons and the Rev. R. Grey, to which is prefixed a Praxis … with a Sketch of the Hebrew Poetry, as retrieved by Bishop Hare,’ was published at Boston, New England, 1763, 8vo. 3. ‘Observations relating to various parts of Scripture History,’ Cambridge, 1768, 8vo.

 LYONS, ISRAEL, the younger (1739–1775), mathematician and botanist, son of Israel Lyons the elder [q. v.], born at Cambridge in 1739, displayed in early life a great inclination to learning, and particularly to mathematics. Dr. Robert Smith, master of Trinity College, offered to put him to school at his own expense, but he went only for a day or two, saying he could learn more by himself in an hour than with his master in a day. In 1755 he began to study botany, in which he became well versed, and he collected large materials for a ‘Flora Cantabrigiensis.’ He afterwards published ‘A Treatise of Fluxions’ (London, 1758, 8vo), with a dedication to his friend, Dr. Smith. In 1763 there appeared at London in 8vo his ‘Fasciculus Plantarum circa Cantabrigiam nascentium quæ post Raium observatæ fuere.’ In July 1764 he delivered a course of lectures on botany at Oxford, at the instance of Mr. (afterwards Sir Joseph) Banks, whom he first instructed in that science. In December 1770 he advertised proposals to publish by subscription a correct map of Cambridgeshire, from an actual survey taken by himself with very accurate instruments of the best construction (Cambridge Chronicle, 22 Dec. 1770).

In 1773 he was appointed by the board of longitude to accompany as principal astronomer Captain Phipps (afterwards Lord Mulgrave) in his voyage to the North Pole, and he drew up the tables annexed to the account of that expedition. He was granted an annual income of 100l. for calculating the ‘Nautical Almanac,’ and frequently received presents from the board of longitude for his inventions. He was married at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, London, in March 1774 to Phœbe, daughter of Newman Pearson of Over, Cambridgeshire. He died at his house in Rathbone Place, London, on 1 May 1775 (Gent. Mag. 1775, i. 254).

Lyons could read Latin and French well, but wrote the former language indifferently. He was a student of English history, and was particularly well read in the old chronicles. He was, according to Cole, very debauched (Addit. MS. 5875, f. 96). His ‘Calculations in Spherical Trigonometry abridged’ are in the ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ vol. lxi. art. 46, and his name appears