He was in that year appointed professor of history, geography, and experimental philosophy at the military college at Great Marlow (removed in 1812 to Sandhurst). In the same year he was made LL.D. by the university of Edinburgh. He retired on a pension in 1817, and died at Islington, 30 April 1818.
Clarke was a frequent contributor to mathematical journals, especially to the ‘Ladies' Diary,’ then edited by Hutton, from 1772 to 1782. He was a candidate for a fellowship of the Royal Society in 1783, but rejected by the influence of Sir Joseph Banks, then president. Horsley (afterwards bishop), in a speech directed against Banks, complains especially of this case, and speaks of Clarke as an ‘inventor’ in mathematics. Clarke's works are: 1. ‘Practical Perspective,’ 1776 (for the use of schools). 2. ‘The Rationale of Circulating Numbers,’ 1777. 3. ‘Dissertation on the Summation of Infinite Converging Series with Algebraic Divisors’ (translated from Lorgna), 1779, with appendix. John Landen [q. v.] attacked this in a pamphlet, on the ground that the method was contained in Simpson's ‘Mathematical Dissertations.’ Clarke replied in a ‘Supplement’ (1782), and to a further attack in ‘Additional Remarks,’ 1783. The controversy is noticed in Hutton's ‘Mathematical Dictionary’ (under ‘Landen’). Clarke was attacked in the ‘Monthly Review’ for 1783, and defended by Horsley (see above). 4. ‘The School Candidates,’ a prosaic burlesque, 1788. This is a squib upon the election to the Stretford school. Clarke appears also to have published two pieces, ‘The Pedagogue’ and ‘The College,’ of similar character, about the same time. 5. ‘Tabula Linguarum,’ 1793 (tables of declension and conjugation in forty languages, a book of antiquated philology). 6. ‘Tachygraphy, or Shorthand improved’ (founded on Byrom's system), before 1800. 7. ‘The Seaman's Desiderata,’ 1800 (tables for calculating longitude, &c.). 8. ‘Animadversions on Dr. Dickson's translation of Carnot's reflections on the Theory of the Infinitissimal [sic] Calculus,’ 1802. 9. ‘Abstract of Geography,’ 1807 (only published number of a projected series of school-books for the Marlow College). 10. ‘Virgil revindicated,’ 1809, an answer to a tract by Horsley on Virgil's ‘Two Seasons of Honey.’
Clarke projected many other books, noticed by Mr. Bailey. He drew some plates for Whitaker's ‘History of Manchester.’ He was a man of wide knowledge, versatile talents, and great industry. He left a widow, and was survived by two sons and four daughters out of seventeen children.
[Gent. Mag. 1818, i. 465; Life by Mr. J. E. Bailey, prefixed to a reprint of the School Candidates (1877), where all available information has been most carefully collected; see also Hutton's Mathematical Dictionary (under ‘Circulating Numbers’ and ‘Landen’); and article by T. T. Wilkinson in Memoirs of Manchester Lit. and Phil. Soc. xi. 135–7.]
CLARKE, HEWSON (1787–1832?), miscellaneous writer, born in 1787, was apprenticed at an early age to Mr. Huntley, chemist and druggist, Gateshead. There he contributed to the ‘Tyne Mercury’ a series of papers, afterwards enlarged and published in the ‘Saunterer’ (Newcastle, 1805, 2nd ed. 1806). This brought him local fame and some influential friends, and led to a sizarship in Emmanuel College, Cambridge. His university life was very irregular; he left without a degree, and went to London, where he edited the ‘Scourge,’ a monthly publication, contributed to the ‘Satirist,’ and engaged in miscellaneous literary work. He attacked characters so different as Joanna Southcote and Lord Byron. The first ‘being a prophetess was fair game for any one to shoot at,’ so Joanna’s friends reported him to have said, while she herself stated the libel to have been that ‘I attended Carpenter’s chapel, called the house of God, dressed in diamonds, and fell in love with the candle-snuffer, a comely youth, and went away with him, &c.’ (An Answer to Thomas Paine, &c., 1812, pp. 51 et semp.) Clarke libelled Byron in the ‘Satirist ’ for over a year. ‘For no reason that I can discover,' says Byron, in the postscript to the second edition of ‘English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,’ ‘except a personal quarrel with a bear kept by me at Cambridge, to sit for a fellowship, and whom the jealousy of his Trinity contemporaries prevented from success.’ In that work Clarke is twice mentioned, and once with reference to a poem of his on ‘The Art of pleasing,’ his character is thus described :—
There Clarke, still striving piteously ‘to please,'
Forgetting dogg’rel leads not to degrees,
A would-be satirist, a hired buffoon,
A monthly scribbler of some low lampoon,
Coudemn`d to drudge, the meanest of the mean,
And furbish falsehoods for a magazine,
Dcvotes to scandal his congenial mind;
Himself a living libel on mankind.
Despite Byron’s judgement, Clarke’s writing prove him to have been a man of considerable ability. His other works were: ‘An impartial History of the Naval, Military, and Political Events in Europe, from the commencement of the French Revolution to the entrance of the Allies into Paris, and the conclusion of a
