bust of Prince Rupert, and several other busts and statuettes in white stoneware. At the South Kensington Museum are a beautifully executed little bust of James II and a statuette of a child with a skull at her feet, supposed to represent his daughter Lydia, and here also is the undoubted effigy of Lydia before mentioned. What has been conjectured to be a third memento of this child is a hand apparently cast from life, which is in the British Museum. Both museums contain specimens of his useful ware-mugs, noggins, bellarmines, and the like, a number of which were discovered some years ago in a bricked-up cellar at the Fulham works. Other specimens of Dwight's ware are in private hands, but the identification of any of the more artistic pieces of Dwight's manufacture would have been difficult now if it had not been for the preservation by his descendants at the Fulham works of a few capital and authentic specimens, which were bought by Mr. Baylis of Prior Park in 1862. From him they were acquired by Mr. C. W. Reynolds, and are now generally known as the Reynolds' Collection, which was dispersed by auction in 1871. It is from this source that most of the finer specimens in the South Kensington and British Museum came.
Whether Dwight himself modelled any of the statuettes and busts that were produced at his works is not known. He is said to have employed Italian workmen, and it is difficult to believe that such masterpieces of plastic art as the Meleager, the bust of Prince Rupert, and several other pieces of the same stamp, could have been the work of any but a thoroughly trained sculptor. There is, however, no doubt that he was a man of rare artistic taste, and some of the statuettes, and even the effigy of Lydia, are not beyond the range of a skilled amateur. M. Solon seems to be inclined to give him the credit of all, and writes of the effigy: ‘We fancy we can trace the loving care of a bereaved father in the reproduction of the features, and the minute perfection with which the accessories, such as flowers and lace, are treated.’
Though successful with the ordinary useful ware of commerce, Dwight's more artistic productions do not seem to have attracted their due share of attention, and he is said to have buried his models and tools in disgust. The only trait of his character except his affection for Lydia, of which we have evidence, is his love of hiding. One of his pocket-books contains memoranda of money (often considerable sums) stowed away in different holes and corners of his ovens and kitchen.
Altogether few men at once so important and so long-lived have left so few records of their lives and themselves, and the little we know of him has been obscured and confused by those who have written about him. Even about his daughter Lydia conjecture has not been happy. Her effigy is clearly that of little more than an infant, and contradicts the supposition (founded by the late Mr. Jewitt on an entry in one of the pocket-books already mentioned) that this Lydia Dwight was fifteen years old when she died. The statuette in the South Kensington Museum which is supposed to represent Lydia Dwight has long hair, and is evidently of a girl older than the original of the effigy. The hand in the British Museum is also too old for the effigy, and too young for a girl of fifteen. As the other entries in the same books begin in 1691, there is another reason for thinking that the Lydia Dwight who wrote her name in it was not the same as she who died in 1673, and it seems on the whole probable that, having lost his first Lydia in infancy, he called a later daughter by the same name. That he had at least one child who grew to maturity is more than probable, for in 1737 the pottery belonged to a Margaret Dwight who married a Mr. White, and the works were in the possession of her descendants till 1864. If Lydia Dwight was fifteen when she died in 1673, this Margaret could not have been her sister by the same mother, but if Lydia died in infancy it is at least possible that she was.
[Jewitt's Ceramic Art in Great Britain; Church's English Earthenware; Solon's Art of the Old English Potter; Plot's Hist. of Oxfordshire; Lysons's Environs, ii. 399, 400; Gent. Mag. 1737; Chaffers's Marks and Monograms; Art Journal, October 1862; Meteyard's Life of Wedgwood.]
DWIGHT, SAMUEL, (1669?–1737), physician, born about 1669, was the son of John Dwight, who has been identified with the potter noticed in the preceding article. A brother Philip was vicar of Fulham from 1708 till his death in 1729. Another brother, Edmund, was born in 1676. In July 1687 the father is described as being then of Wigan, Lancashire (Oxford Matriculation Register, cited in Welch, Alumni Westmon. 1852, p. 207). Samuel entered Westminster School in 1686, matriculated a commoner of Christ Church, Oxford, 12 July 1687, when eighteen years of age, and as a member of that house proceeded B.A. 23 May 1691, M.A. 14 Feb. 1693 (Oxford Graduates, 1851, p. 201). Some verses of his occur among the academical rejoicings on the birth of James II's son in 1688; others are in the collection celebrating the return of William III from Ireland in
