Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 42.djvu/161

  3d. It was praised by Goldsmith as ‘written with much good sense and still more good nature,’ and it was embodied in Goldsmith's ‘Life of Beau Nash.’ It also appeared in the ‘Public Ledger’ of 12 March 1761, and in the Rev Richard Warner's ‘History of Bath,’ pp. 370–1. To the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ for 1723 and 1755 respectively he contributed brief papers on medical topics, the former being addressed to Dr. Richard Mead.

Oliver wrote some elegiac lines on the death of Ralph Thicknesse; he was standing at Thicknesse's elbow at the moment that Thicknesse fell dead as he was playing the first fiddle in a performance of a piece of his own composition at a concert in Bath (cf., New Prose Bath Guide, p. 33; , Lit. Anecd. ix. 253; , Bath Abbey Church, p. 92; , Restituta, iv. 421–2). His lines to Sir John Cope ‘upon his catching Sir Anthony's fire by drinking Bath waters,’ are in Mrs. Stopford Sackville's manuscripts (Hist. MSS. Comm. 9th Rep. App. iii. 132).

Oliver applied to Dr. Borlase for minerals for Pope's grotto, and his name frequently occurs in the letters of Pope and Borlase at Castle Horneck, near Penzance. A letter to Oliver from Pope, dated 8 Oct. 1740, and the property of Mr., was inserted with the first draft of the reply in Carruthers's ‘Life of Pope’ (Bohn's Illustrated Library, 1857, pp. 173–4). Several other letters were formerly in the possession of Upcott. One, dated 28 Aug. 1743, is printed in Roscoe's ‘Works of Pope,’ i. 541–2, and it was reprinted with two others which were taken from the ‘European Magazine,’ 1791, pt. ii. p. 409, and 1792, pt. i. p. 6, in Courthope's edition, x. 242–5. In the summer of 1743 Oliver wrote to Pope to free himself from all knowledge of John Tillard's attack on Warburton, which was dedicated to him without his knowledge (Works, ed. Courthope, ix. 233). Two letters from Warburton to Oliver are in Nichols's ‘Literary Anecdotes,’ v. 581–582, and several communications from him to Doddridge from 1743 to 1749 are contained in the latter's ‘Correspondence,’ v. 223–225, 302–4, v. 66–7, 126–9. Three letters from Stephen Duck to him are printed in the ‘European Magazine,’ 1795, pt. i. p. 80 and pt. ii. p. 79. He bestowed many favours on Duck, and was, no doubt, the polite son of Æsculapius depicted in that author's ‘Journey to Marlborough, Bath, &c.’ (Works, 1753, p. 75). A letter from Oliver to Dr. Ward on two Roman altars discovered at Bath is in the British Museum, Addit. MS. 6181, f. 63, and three more letters referring to some dirty and miserly old acquaintance of Jacob Tonson at Bath in 1735, are in Addit. MS. 28275, fols. 356–61. Some manuscript letters to Jurin belong to the Royal Society. Benjamin Heath dedicated to him in 1740 ‘The Essay towards a demonstrative Proof of the Divine Existence;’ plate 18 in the ‘Antiquities of Cornwall’ was engraved at his expense and inscribed to him by Dr. Borlase; and the later impressions of Mary Chandler's ‘Description of Bath’ contained (pp. 21–3) some verses to him acknowledging that he had corrected her poem, and that ‘ev'n Pope approv'd when you had tun'd my Lyre.’

[Gent. Mag. 1764, p. 147; Collinson's Somerset, i. 165; Tunstall's Bath Rambles (1848), p. 33; Peach's Historic Houses of Bath, 2nd ser. pp. 77–9; Britton's Bath Abbey, p. 98; Hunter's Bath and Literature, p. 89; Monkland's Literature of Bath, pp. 6–7, and Suppl. p. 51; Wright's Historic Guide to Bath, pp. 131–4; Murch's Bath Physicians, pp. 21–2; Falconer's Bath Hospital, passim; Boase and Courtney's Bibl. Cornub.; Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Nichols's Lit. Anecdotes, iii. 636, v. 92; D. Gilbert's Cornwall, iii. 88; Peacock's Leyden Students (Index Soc.); Quarterly Review, October 1875, pp. 379–94 (by W. C. Borlase); Western Antiquary, vii. 8.] 

 OLIVER, WILLIAM (1804?–1853), landscape-painter, was born about 1804. He painted in oil as well as in water-colours, but chiefly in the latter, and took most of his subjects from foreign scenery, especially in France and the Pyrenees. He began to exhibit in 1829, when he sent to the Society of British Artists ‘A Beach Scene in Kent' and a ‘Fish Boat.' In 1831 he was elected a member of the New Society (now the Royal Institute) of Painters in Water-Colours, and his drawings appeared annually at its exhibitions until 1854. He also sent oil-paintings to the Royal Academy from 1835 so 1853, and to the British Institution from 1836. He published in 1842 a folio of 'Scenery of the Pyrenees,' lithographed by George Barnard, Thomas Shotter Boys, Carl Hughe, and others.

Oliver died at Langley Mill House, Halstead, Essex, on 2 Nov. 1553, aged 49. There is an oil-painting by him of ‘Foligno' in the South Kensington Museum.

His wife, (1819-1885), daughter of W. Eburne, coachbuilder, of Rathbone Place, London, was born on 15 Aug. 1819, and married in 1840. She was elected a member of the New Society of Painters in Water-Colours in 1849, and exhibited also landscapes both in water-colours and in oil at the Royal Academy,