Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 62.djvu/379

 way to Number our Days,' London, 1681, fol. In these treatises, which were dedicated to the order of the Garter, and sometimes accompanied by a single folio sheet entitled 'Novus Annus Luni-solaris,' he proposed to rectify the year so that the first day of the month should always be within a day of the change of the moon, while by a system of compensations the length of the year should be kept within a week of the period of rotation round the sun. Wood translated the greater part of William Oughtred's 'Clavis Mathematica' into English (Clavis Mathematica, 1652, pref.) He published two papers in the 'Philosophical Transactions' in 1681.

 WOOD, ROBERT (1717?–1771), traveller and politician, was born at Riverstown Castle, near Trim, co. Meath, about 1717. He is said to have been educated at Oxford, but his name is not in Foster's ‘Alumni Oxonienses.’ According to Horace Walpole, he was ‘originally a travelling tutor and an excellent classic scholar,’ and he certainly when a young man travelled through parts of eastern Europe. In May 1742 he journeyed in a Venetian vessel from Venice to Corfu, and in the same year he passed from Mitylene to Scio in the Chatham. On 5 Feb. 1743 he sailed from Latakia in Syria to Damietta in Egypt.

About 1749 Wood agreed to revisit Greece in the company of John Bouverie and James Dawkins, both graduates of Oxford, with whom he had travelled in France and Italy, and they arranged that Borra, an Italian artist, should accompany them as ‘architect and draughtsman.’ They passed the winter of 1749-50 together at Rome—where Bouverie had in many visits acquired an extensive knowledge of art and architecture—then went to Naples, and in the spring embarked in the ship sent to them from London. On 25 July 1750 they anchored under the Sigean promontory, and went on shore at the mouth of the Scamander, Bouverie died on 8 Sept, 1750, and was buried at Smyrna (, Alumni Oxon.), but the expedition subsequently took in ‘most of the islands of the archipelago, part of Greece in Europe, the Asiatic and European coasts of the Hellespont, Propontis, and Bosphorus as far as the Black Sea, most of the inland ports of Asia Minor, Syria, Phœnicia, Palestine, and Egypt.’ The survivors came to Athens about May 1751, and found Revett and Stuart busy in studying and making drawings of its antiquities. These artists received much encouragement and assistance, while in that city, from Dawkins and Wood, who also gave material help to the publication of the first volume of ‘The Antiquities of Athens.’ From 14 to 27 March 1751 Dawkins and Wood were at Palmyra, and on 1 April they reached Balbec.

Wood published in 1753 ‘The Ruins of Palmyra, otherwise Tedmor in the Desart,’ which was described by Horace Walpole as a noble book, with prints finely engraved and an admirable dissertation (Letters, ed. Cunningham, ii. 364). French translations of it were published in 1753, 1819, and 1829. In 1757 Wood brought out a corresponding volume on ‘The Ruins of Balbec, otherwise Heliopolis in Cœlosyria,’ This was translated into French (1757), and the Abbé Barthélemy gave an account of both works in the ‘Journal des Savants’ (afterwards included in his ‘Œuvres Diverses’). ‘These beautiful editions of Balbec and Palmyra’ were again eulogised by Horace Walpole in the preface to his ‘Anecdotes of Painting’ as ‘standards of writing.’ A new edition of both Palmyra and Balbec was issued by Pickering in 1827, in one folio volume, priced at six guineas. S. Salome of Cheltenham published in 1830 a volume of ‘Palmyrene Inscriptions taken from Wood's “Ruins of Palmyra and Balbec,” transcribed into the Ancient Hebrew Characters and translated into English.’ Louis Francois Cassas, in his ‘Voyage pittoresque de la Syrie’ (1799), pays Wood's ‘Palmyra’ a high compliment.

About 1753 Wood accompanied the young Duke of Bridgewater as his travelling companion on the grand tour through France and Italy, and during their stay at Rome his portrait, now in the Bridgewater Gallery, No. 121, was painted by Mengs ( and, ed. Mitford, pp. 100, 132, 497), and afterwards engraved by Tomkins in the ‘Marquis of Stafford's Collection.’ He was elected a member of the Society of Dilettanti on 1 May 1763, and received from [q. v.] very handsome praise in tha ‘Marmora Oxoniensia’ (1763, preface p. v). Wood in return recommended Chandler to be the leader of the party sent by that society to explore ‘the ancient state of the countries’ in eastern Europe and in Asia Minor, and drew up the instructions under 