Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/83

 engraver. Nixon was for many years secretary to the Beefsteak Club, and died in 1818.

Another contributor to the same series of views was (1759–1837), who was curate of Foot's Cray in Kent from 1784 to 1804, and was an honorary exhibitor at the Royal Academy and the Society of Artists from 1790 to 1818. He appears to have been brother of the above, and identical with the Robert Nixon, son of Robert Nixon of London, who graduated at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1780, became a bachelor of divinity in 1790, and died at Kenmure Castle, New Galloway, on 5 Nov. 1837, aged 78. He married at Foot's Cray, on 31 Jan. 1799, Ann Russell, by whom he was father of the Rev. Francis Russell Nixon [q. v.], bishop of Tasmania. It was in Nixon's house that Turner, when a boy, in 1793 completed his first painting in oils. 

NIXON, ROBERT (fl. 1620?), the ‘Cheshire Prophet,’ who is stated by one writer to have been born in the parish of Over, Delamere, Cheshire, in 1467, and by another authority to have lived in the reign of James I, but about whose existence at all there exists some doubt, was the reputed author of certain predictions which were long current in Cheshire. All accounts point to his having been an idiot, a retainer of the Cholmondeley family of Vale Royal, and to his having been inspired at intervals to deliver oracular prophecies of future events, both national and local. These prognostications, generally of the usual vague character, were first published in 1714 by John Oldmixon. A further account of Nixon by ‘W.E.’ was issued in 1716. Innumerable subsequent editions have been published, and the various versions were collated and edited in 1873, and again in 1878, by W. E. A. Axon. Nixon is said to have attracted the royal notice, and to have been sent for to court, where he was starved to death through forgetfulness, in a manner which he himself had predicted. Dickens's allusion in ‘Pickwick’ to ‘red-faced Nixon’ refers to the coloured portraits which occur in some chap-book editions of the prophecies. 

NIXON, SAMUEL (1803–1854), sculptor, was born in 1803. In 1826 he exhibited at the Royal Academy ‘The Shepherd,’ in 1828 ‘The Reconciliation of Adam and Eve after the Fall,’ in 1830 ‘The Birth of Venus,’ and in 1831 ‘The Infant Moses.’ He was principally employed during the next few years on portrait and sepulchral sculpture. When Philip Hardwick [q. v.] the architect was engaged on building Goldsmiths' Hall, in Foster Lane, Cheapside, he employed Nixon to do the sculptural decorations; the groups of the four seasons on the staircase were especially admired. Nixon also executed a statue of John Carpenter for the City of London School, and one of Sir John Crosby, to be placed in Crosby Hall, Bishopsgate Street. His principal work was the statue of William IV at the end of King William Street in the city, on the exact site of the famous Boar's Head of Eastcheap, set up in December 1844. This statue, which is fifteen feet three inches in height, is constructed of two blocks of Scotch granite, and the difficulty of the work severely crippled Nixon's health and resources (cf. Gent. Mag. 1844, i. 179). Nixon's workshop was at 2 White Hart Court, Bishopsgate Street, and he died at Kennington House, Kennington Common, on 2 Aug. 1854, aged 51. A brother was a glass-painter of repute.  NOAD, HENRY MINCHIN (1815–1877), electrician, born at Shawford, near Frome, Somerset, 22 June 1815, was son of Humphrey Noad, by Miss Hunn, a half-sister of the Rt. Hon. George Canning. He was educated at Frome grammar school, and was intended for the civil service in India, but the untimely death of his patron, William Huskisson [q. v.], caused a change in his career, and he commenced the study of chemistry and electricity. About 1836 he delivered lectures on these subjects at the literary and scientific institutions of Bath and Bristol. He next examined the peculiar voltaic conditions of iron and bismuth (Philosophical Mag. 1838, xii. 48–52), described some properties of the water battery, and elucidated that curious phenomenon the passive state of iron. In 1845 he came to London, and studied chemistry under August Wilhelm Hofmann, in the newly founded Royal College of Chemistry. While with Hofmann he made researches on the oxidation of cymol or cymene, the hydro-carbon which Gerhardt and Cahours discovered in 1840 in the volatile oil of Roman cumin. The results were in part communicated to the Chemical Society (Memoirs, 1845–8, iii. 421–40) at the time, and more fully afterwards to the ‘Philosophical Magazine,’ 1848, xxxii. 15–35. 