Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 48.djvu/419

  (third of the name); Dean Stanley; Alexander Dyce, the Shakespearean scholar; and he was well and long acquainted with Tennyson. Besides his other work, he was a learned contributor to the 'Quarterly Review.' He took much interest in the cathedral library at Canterbury, prompted the erection of the building which now contains it, and rearranged the catalogue. He was ecclesiastically a moderate high churchman, but his historical knowledge made him condemn ultra-ritualism, and brought him, in such matters, into accord with Bishop Thirlwall and Dean Stanley.

 ROBERTSON, JOHN (1712–1776), mathematician, was born in 1712. Though apprenticed to a trade, he became a teacher in mathematics, and in 1748 was appointed master of the royal mathematical school in Christ's Hospital. In 1755 he became first master of the Royal Naval Academy at Portsmouth. Having lost this appointment in 1766 'through petty cabals of the second master,' he returned to London, and was appointed clerk and librarian to the Royal Society on 7 Jan. 1768. This office he held, with repute, till his death, on 11 Dec. 1776. He was respected by prominent members of the society, and his advice in the council was much respected.

His chief publication was 'The Elements of Navigation,' which appeared in 1754, and went through seven editions in fifty years. His other works were: He also published nine papers in the 'Philosophical Transactions,' 1750–72, 'On Logarithmic Tangents;' 'On Logarithmic Lines on Gunter's Scale' (cf., Script. Log. vol. v. 1791); 'On Extraordinary Phenomena in Portsmouth Harbour;' 'On the Specific Gravity of Living Men;' 'On the Fall of Water under Bridges;' 'On Circulating Decimals;' 'On the Motion of a Body deflected by Forces from Two Fixed Points;' and 'On Twenty Cases of Compound Interest.' He is said to have been the first to discover the theorem that in stereographic projection the angle between two circles on the sphere equals the angle between two circles on projection (, Aperçu Hist. pp. 516–17).
 * 1) 'A Compleat Treatise of Mensuration,' 1739; 2nd edit. 1748.
 * 2) 'Mathematical Instruments,' 1747; 4th edit. 1778 (by W. Mountaine).
 * 3) 'A Translation of De La Caille's Elements of Astronomy,' 1750.

 ROBERTSON, JOHN (1767–1810), minor poet, was born in Paisley on 30 Nov. 1767. His father, a prosperous grocer, gave him the best education Paisley could furnish. Business reverses, however, narrowed the father's means, and Robertson enlisted in the Fife militia in 1803, being speedily appointed to a regimental clerkship, and he is believed also to have acted as regimental schoolmaster (, Modern Scottish Minstrel). He interested himself in literature, but he seems to have become dissipated and melancholy, and committed suicide at Kilsea, near Portsmouth, in April 1810. Robertson's lyrics were never collected, but his song 'The Toom Meal Pock,' written during a dearth in 1800, has merit, and is in all adequate collections of Scottish poetry.

 ROBERTSON, JOHN  (1816–1891), Australian statesman, third son of James Robertson, was born at Bow, London, on 15 Oct. 1816. The father was a friend of Governor Sir [q. v.], by whom he was induced to settle in New South Wales in 1820. He received a grant of 2,500 acres of land, and settled as a squatter on the Upper Hunter River. Himself a Scots presbyterian, Robertson placed his son John under the care of [q. v.] John was afterwards educated at private schools, and at sixteen, contrary to his parents' wishes, became a sailor. Having some knowledge of navigation and a reputation as a good boatman, he was in 1833 taken on as a paid hand on board the Sovereign, trading with London. Among the letters which the ship carried home was one to a tenant on Lord Palmerston's estate. Lord Palmerston in some way got to know of it, sent for Robertson, took a fancy to him, and wrote to the governor of the colony on his behalf. But Robertson, for the present bent on further travel, visited Scotland, Ireland, and France, and returned to Australia through South America. Arriving at Sydney in the course of 1835, he settled down at once to a squatter's life in the Liverpool plains, outside the area of police protection and government regulation. Realising the inconvenience and danger of the situation, he took a prominent part in a petition to the governor for better regulations (1836). The governor was opposed to the formation of fresh settlements at the time. Thereupon the squatters sent Robertson as their representative to the governor on the subject (1837). The success of his mission at once brought him into prominence as an advocate of squatters'