Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 54.djvu/250

 :: as Hunting, Hawking, Fishing, Fowling, Coursing, Cockfighting. To which is likewise added a necessary advise touching Physick, when it may and when not be taken. Lastly every Moneth is shut up with an Epigrame, with the fairs of every month; London for Thomas Jenner, Royal Exchange,’ 1661. A quaint woodcut illustrates the occupations of each month. Donaldson (Agricult. Biogr. p. 29) remarks upon the singularity of the work, which is evidently based less upon research than upon oral tradition and current folklore (, Censura, iv. 410).
 * 1)   ‘Bellum Presbyteriale. Or as much said for the Presbyter as may be. Together with their Covenants Catastrophe. Held forth in an Heroic Poem,’ London, 1661, 4to. The catastrophe refers to the burning of the covenant by the common hangman on 22 May 1661 and the consequent confusion of the ‘Phanaticks,’ at which the author rejoices.
 * 2) ‘Florus Britannicus; or an exact Epitome of the History of England From William the Conquerour to the Twelfth Year of the Reign of his Sacred Majesty Charls the Second now flourishing. Illustrated with their perfect Portraictures in exact Copper Plates very delightfull to the reader: as also, every King and Queens Elegie, with a Panegyrick upon his Maiesties Happy Returne. London for Thos Jenner, Royal Exchange,’ 1662, 4to. The volume, which is very rare in a perfect state, was dedicated to the writer's cousin ‘Mrs. Grace Killingbeck of Baroughby Grange, near Weatherby in Yorkshire,’ and dated ‘from my study in F. Street,’ London, 12 March 1661. The letterpress, amounting to a page and a half for each monarch, was evidently written to accompany the plates, which are by Elstrack.
 * 3) ‘Poems by Matthew Stevenson. London for Lodowick Lloyd,’ 1665. The work, again preceded by Gaywood's portrait, is inscribed to ‘Edward [Somerset] Lord Marquess of Worcester,’ upon whose ‘inimitable Water-Commanding Engine’ there is an elaborate panegyrick, and it is recommended by ‘Val. Oldis, Henry Bold, Edw. Baynard, and E. Bostocke.’ Many of the poems, as the author avows, had seen the light before.
 * 4) ‘Norfolk Drollery. Or, a compleat Collection of the Newest Songs, Jovial Poems, and Catches, &c. By the author, M. Stevenson,’ London, 1673, 12mo. Two dedicatory letters are addressed respectively to ‘Madam Mary Hunt of Sharington Hall’ and ‘My Very noble Friend Thos. Brown of Elsing Hall.’ There are commendatory verses by ‘Arth. Tichborne.’ There are several reissues, with fresh title-pages. In one of 1673 the work is styled simply ‘Poems;’ in another of 1685 it is headed ‘The Wits.’ Many of the verses had already done duty before, and the additions are mostly of a frivolous nature. The author celebrates the East Anglian labourer's practice of demanding ‘largesse’ from fieldfarers; but there is little distinctive of Norfolk about the various collections, which are remarkable chiefly for their quaint originality of manner.



STEVENSON, ROBERT (1772–1850), civil engineer, born at Glasgow on 8 June 1772, was only child of Alan Stevenson, a West India merchant, who died at St. Christopher on 26 May 1774, when Robert was an infant. The father came of a family whose members were originally settled as cultivators at Nether Carswell in the parish of Neilston, Renfrewshire, and afterwards, in the eighteenth century, engaged in business first as maltsters and later as West India merchants at Glasgow. Jean, Robert Stevenson's mother, was the daughter of David Lillie, a builder in Glasgow. After her husband's death she was for a time in straitened circumstances, and Robert began his education in a charity school. It was intended that he should enter the church, but before he had attained his sixteenth year his mother married Thomas Smith, engineer to the recently (1786) constituted northern lighthouse board, and he entered his stepfather's office. He studied civil engineering at the winter sessions of the Andersonian Institute, Glasgow, and afterwards at the university of Edinburgh. Smith showed his confidence in him by entrusting to him, while still in his teens, the superintendence of the erection of lighthouse buildings, lanterns, and optical apparatus, and the formation of ‘macadam’ roads of access to lighthouse stations. Communication with headquarters was difficult, as the stations were often situated on uninhabited islands or headlands, to which the materials were brought in smacks. In 1796 Smith took him into partnership, and he married Jean, Smith's eldest daughter by a former marriage.

A few years later Stevenson succeeded Smith as engineer to the Scottish lighthouse board, and held the office for about half a century. He practically inaugurated the Scottish lighthouse system, which is still