Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 46.djvu/82

 and others of the Anglo-Irish party. Ponce was author also of the following works, published at Paris: ‘Philosophiæ Cursus,’ 1656; ‘Judicium Doctrinæ Sanctorum Augustini et Thomæ,’ 1657; ‘Scotus Hiberniæ Restitutus,’ 1660; ‘Commentarii Theologici,’ 1661.

Ponce died at Paris about 1660. A portrait of him is in St. Isidore's College, Rome.

[Scriptores Ordinis Minorum, 1650; Gilbert's Contemporary History of Affairs in Ireland, 1879, and History of Irish Confederation and War, 1881; Lowndes's Bibl. Man. ed. Bohn.]  POND, ARTHUR (1705?–1758), painter and engraver, born about 1705, was educated in London, and made a short sojourn in Rome for purposes of studying art in company with the sculptor Roubiliac. He became a successful portrait-painter. The most notable of his numerous original portraits are those of Alexander Pope, William, duke of Cumberland, and Peg Woffington; the last is in the National Portrait Gallery. Pond was also a prolific etcher, and an industrious worker in various mixed processes of engraving by means of which he imitated or reproduced the works of masters such as Rembrandt, Raphael, Salvator Rosa, Parmigiano, Caravaggio, and the Poussins. In 1734–5 he published a series of his plates under the title ‘Imitations of the Italian Masters.’ He also collaborated with George Knapton in the publication of the ‘Heads of Illustrious Persons,’ after Houbraken and Vertue, with lives by Dr. Birch (London, 1743–52), and engraved sixty-eight plates for a collection of ninety-five reproductions from drawings by famous masters, in which Knapton was again his colleague. Another of his productions was a series of twenty-five caricatures after the Cavaliere Ghezzi, republished in 1823 and 1832 as ‘Eccentric Characters.’ He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1752, and died in Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, 9 Sept. 1758. His collection of drawings by the old masters was sold the following year, and realised over fourteen hundred pounds. An anonymous etched portrait of Pond is mentioned by Bromley.

[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Gent. Mag. 1758, p. 452; Lowndes's Bibl. Man. p. 1911.]  POND, EDWARD (fl. 1623), almanac-maker, is described on the title-page of his almanac of 1601 as ‘a practitioner in the Mathematicks and Physicke at Bidarcay (?Billericay) in Essex.’ In this almanac he includes a diagram and description of ‘Man's Anatomy’ and ‘Physicke Notes.’ From 1604 he published an almanac each year in London under the title ‘Enchiridion, or Edward Pond his Eutheca.’ Subsequently the periodical issue was christened ‘An Almanac by Ed. Pond, student of Physics and Mathematics.’ In October 1623 the Stationers' Company petitioned the privy council against the infraction of their monopoly as almanac publishers by Cantrell Legge, printer to Cambridge University, but apparently without success, for from 1627 Pond's almanacs continued to be issued from the University press. Pond died at Peterborough, and was buried in the Church of St. John the Baptist in that city on 10 Sept. 1629 (SWEETING, Parish Churches round Peterborough). The popularity of his publication led to its continuance, under a slightly modified title, until 1709. The later series was prepared at Saffron Walden, doubtless by a relative of Pond, and each part was designated ‘Pond, an Almanac.’ This was printed at Cambridge until the close of the century, and in London during the early years of the eighteenth century. The rhyme, My skill goes beyond The depth of a Pond, a reference to Pond's popular reputation as an astronomer, occurs in Martin Parker's ballad ‘When the king enjoys his own again’ (, Political Ballads, i. 11).

[Pond's Almanacs; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1623–5, p. 98; Arber's Stat. Reg. v. p. xlix; Hazlitt's Collections, i. 336, ii. 483.]  POND, JOHN (1767–1836), astronomer-royal, was born in London in 1767. His father soon afterwards withdrew from business, with an ample competence, to live at Dulwich. Pond's education, begun at the Maidstone grammar school, was continued at home under the tuition of William Wales [q. v.], from whom he imbibed a taste for astronomy. His keenness was shown by the detection, when about fifteen, of errors in the Greenwich observations. At sixteen he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he devoted himself to chemistry; but he was obliged by ill-health to leave the university, and went abroad, visiting Portugal, Malta, Constantinople, and Egypt, making astronomical observations at his halting-places. About 1798 he settled at Westbury in Somerset, and erected there an altazimuth instrument, by Edward Troughton [q. v.], of two and a half feet diameter, which became known as the ‘Westbury circle’ (see Phil. Trans. xcvi. 424). His observations with it in 1800–1, ‘On the Declinations of some of the Principal Fixed Stars,’ communicated to the Royal Society on 26 June 1806 (ib. p. 420), gave decisive proof of deformation through age in the Greenwich quadrant (Bird's), and rendered inevitable a complete re-equipment of the Royal Observatory.

Pond was elected a fellow of the Royal Society on 26 Feb. 1807. He married in the same year, and fixed his abode in London, occupying himself with practical astronomy.