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NIC was succeeded by Lord Gough. During his tenure of the office occurred the Affghan war, to the policy of which he was steadily opposed, foreseeing its disasters. There are some interesting extracts from his MS. letters and diaries in Mr. Kaye's History of the War in Affghanistan. Sir Jasper Nicholas appears to have died in 1849.—F. E.  NICHOLS,, M.D., was born in London in 1699. His father was a barrister. He was educated at Westminster and Oxford. At the university he turned his attention to medicine, and dissected diligently; he obtained considerable reputation as a practical anatomist, and was chosen reader of anatomy. Having visited the medical schools of Italy and France, after a short trial of practice in Cornwall, he settled in London. There he commenced delivering anatomical and physiological lectures with great success, attracting an audience composed not only of students from both the universities, but of many surgeons and apothecaries in practice. In 1728 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and subsequently contributed several papers to the Philosophical Transactions. In 1729 he received the degree of M.D. from Oxford, and in 1732 he was elected a fellow of the College of Physicians. He twice delivered the Gulstonian lectures at the college, choosing on the first occasion the anatomy of the heart and circulation, on the second the anatomy and diseases of the kidneys and bladder. In 1739 he gave the Harveian oration. In 1748 he was appointed lecturer on surgery to the college; but subsequently deeming himself slighted by the election of a junior fellow to the office of elect, he resigned his lectureship, and ceased to attend the meetings of the fellows. In 1751 he avenged himself in an anonymous pamphlet, entitled "The Petition of the unborn babes to the Censors of the Royal College of Physicians in London." Dr. Nichols married a daughter of Dr. Mead. On the death of Sir Hans Sloane in 1753, he was appointed physician to George II., and held that office up to the time of the king's death. He retired from London practice in 1762, and died at Epsom in 1778, in the eightieth year of his age. He was the inventor of corroded anatomical preparations, and the author of "Compendium Anatomicum," a work which went through several editions.—F. C. W.  NICHOLS,, of the "Literary Anecdotes" and "Illustrations," was born at Islington on the 2nd of February, 1744. Having received a good education, he was apprenticed in his thirteenth year to William Bowyer, the eminent printer, whose typographical accuracy and critical acumen procured him the patronage of the learned. Nichols' industry, business-talents, and literary knowledge made him invaluable to his master, who in 1766 took him into partnership. On Bowyer's death in 1777 Nichols succeeded to the business, which has remained in the family until the present day. The connection with Bowyer was the foundation of Nichols' fame as well as fortune. Although the author and editor of many other works, he will be remembered chiefly as the compiler of the "Literary Anecdotes," and his "Illustrations of the Literature of the eighteenth century," which took their rise in a memoir of Bowyer. In 1778 Nichols printed for private circulation a few copies of "Brief Memoirs of Mr. Bowyer," which in 1782 expanded into "Anecdotes of Bowyer and of many of his literary friends," with whom, while managing the business, Nichols had been brought into connection. The new work was received most favourably, and Nichols was induced to extend it. Hence the nine large volumes of "Literary Anecdotes of the eighteenth century," 1812-15, followed by eight more volumes of "Illustrations of the Literary History of the eighteenth century," commenced in 1817, and of which the last volume, edited by Nichols' son and grandson, was published as recently as 1858. The elder D'Israeli spoke of the "Literary Anecdotes" as "a work which will rank on our shelves with Wood's Athenæ," and it has the advantage over Wood's that it is not the work of one writer, with his prejudices and partialities, but embraces a mass of original correspondence and of contributions from every quarter. The great defect of the work, the absence of arrangement, is compensated in some measure by a series of indexes, which from personal experience we can pronounce to he nearly faultless. The history of solid literature and of the solid commerce of literature in England in the eighteenth century, lies, though scattered, in the two voluminous works of Nichols, which with Wood's Athenæ form a collection such as no other country can boast of. Of the other works which Nichols wrote and edited, there is a full list in vol. vi. of the "Literary Anecdotes." Of his original works the principal are the "Biographical Anecdotes of William Hogarth," 1781; the "History and Antiquities of the Town and Comity of Leicester," 1795-1815, which he himself considered his magnum opus; the "Progresses and Royal Processions of Queen Elizabeth," 1788-1804, full of curious information; and the "Progresses, &c., of King James the First," 1828. To Nichols, as an editor, we owe the publication of Sir Richard Steele's epistolary correspondence, of Atterburys correspondence, &c., and with the assistance of Mr. Gough, the Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica, 1780-90. In 1778 he obtained a share in the Gentleman's Magazine, of which he became the editor, a post for which he was of all men the best fitted. He closed his long, laborious, and useful life on the 26th November, 1826.

, son of the preceding, born in 1779, succeeded to his father's business, and edited the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth volumes of the Illustrations. With Richard Gough, he also edited Hutchins' History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset, 1796-1813. He is the author of "Anecdotes of Hogarth," &c., 1833, and of several other works. He died 26th November, 1863.

Nichols, born in 1806, treads as a literary antiquary in his grandfather's footsteps. He was long one of the editors of the Gentleman's Magazine, which ceased to be the property of the Nichols family in July, 1856. One of his earliest works was his "Autographies of Persons conspicuous in English History," 1829; a series of facsimiles from the time of Richard II. to that of Charles II., with memoirs of the writers. He has edited for the Camden Society a number of works, including the Diary of Machyn, and Narratives of the Days of the Reformation (being the unpublished papers of Fox the Martyrologist); for the Roxburgh Club, a splendid edition of the Literary Remains of Edward VI., with an excellent biographical sketch of their author. He has also translated into English Erasmus' Pilgrimage to Canterbury, Walsingham, &c.—F. E.  NICHOLS or NICCOLS,, an Elizabethan poet, appears to have been born in the year 1584. A foot-note to a passage in his "England's Eliza" states that he was present at the storming of Cadiz by the earl of Essex; but if so, it could only have been in the capacity of a cabin-boy, for that expedition took place in 1597, when he was in his thirteenth year. We learn from Anthony a Wood that he was a student of Magdalen college, Oxford, and took his degree in 1606. He then went up to London, and seems to have supported himself by his pen. It is not known when he died, farther than that it could not have been before 1616, the date on the title-page of the play called "London's Artillery," his latest known work. In literature the chief distinction of this writer is his connection with the "Mirrour for Magistrates," of which he published a new edition in 1610, omitting several histories that had appeared in previous editions, correcting rough lines and faulty rhymes, adding ten histories of British worthies before overlooked, and completing the whole by a history of "the Famous Life and Death of Queene Elizabeth." His "Cuckow," 1607, is an allegorical poem in heroic verse; and though it is by no means a servile imitation, the influence of Spenser and the Faery Queen are discernible in every line. Nichols is certainly not a contemptible poet; but the blaze of glory which surrounds the great names of the Elizabethan epoch, has caused all such minor celebrities to be forgotten.—T. A.  NICHOLS,, D.D., a considerable writer of the Church of England, was born at Derrington in Buckinghamshire in 1664, and was educated at St. Paul's school and the university of Oxford. He graduated in 1688, and having taken orders was made rector of Selsey, near Chichester. In 1695 he took his doctor's degree, and hoped at one time to have been made a prebendary of Westminster, but he died in 1712 without promotion, although he had been an indefatigable labourer in the service of the church. His writings were very numerous, including "An Answer to an Heretical Book called the Naked Gospel;" "A Short History of Socinianism;" "A Conference with a Theist, a Machiavellian, and an Atheist;" "The Religion of a Prince, showing that the precepts of the Holy Scriptures are the best maxims of Government, in reply to the doctrines of Machiavel and Hobbes." But his principal work was his "Defensio Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ," which he wrote first in Latin for the use of foreigners, and afterwards translated into English under the title of "A Defence of the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church 
 * , F.S.A., son of Mr. John Bowyer