Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 33.djvu/228

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and in 1613 he endowed a professorship of mathematics in the Marischal College. He died on 17 Dec. 1613, in the fifty-second year of his age, and bequeathed his books and instruments to the Marischal College. A brass memorial figure of him was afterwards set up in St. Nicholas Church, Aberdeen.

As a mathematician he enjoyed considerable fame in Germany, where he is said to have been the first to teach the astronomy of Copernicus and of Tycho Brahe side by side with the Ptolemaic hypothesis. He was the author of several medical books which were in high repute. Their titles are: 1. ‘Disputationum Medicinalium Liber,’ Helmstadt, 1605; medical theses maintained by himself and his pupils, 1592–1605: the volume is dedicated to Craig. A posthumous edition, under the title ‘Universæ Medicinæ Compendium,’ was published at Helmstadt in 1720. 2. ‘Ars Medica,’ Hamburg, 1608, in five books—I. ‘De Medicinæ Definitione et Principiis;’ II. ‘De Physiologia;’ III. ‘De Pathologia;’ IV. ‘De Signorum Doctrina;’ V. ‘De Therapeutica:’—dedicated to James I. Another edition was published at Lyons in 1624 by Serranus; and in 1628 a third edition appeared at Hamburg, from a copy corrected and enlarged by the author. 3. ‘De Febribus Libri tres,’ Hamburg, 1610; republished by Serranus with the ‘Ars Medica’ in 1624. 4. ‘Tractatus de Dente Aureo,’ Hamburg, 1628, an exposure of a supposed miracle—a boy having a golden tooth—which had imposed on the credulity of Horstius, one of Liddel's colleagues at Helmstadt. 5. ‘Artis Conservandi Sanitatem Libri duo,’ Aberdeen, 1651; edited by Dr. D. P. Dun.

[The main authority for the facts of his life is a letter of Caselius to John Craig, dated May 1607, and prefixed to the Ars Medica. A sketch of his life (with portrait), by Professor Stuart, appeared at Aberdeen in 1790. He is briefly noticed in Burton's Scot Abroad, p. 304.]

C. P.

LIDDELL, HENRY THOMAS, first Earl of Ravensworth (1797–1878), born 10 March 1797, was eldest son of Sir Thomas Henry Liddell, sixth baronet (1775–1855), who was created Baron Ravensworth (of a second creation) 17 July 1821, by Maria Susannah, daughter and coheiress of John Simpson of Bradley. His father was a patron of George Stephenson, and rebuilt Ravensworth Castle in 1808 from designs by Nash. Other sons were General George Augustus Liddell, a groom-in-waiting to the queen, and deputy-ranger of Windsor Great Park; and Sir Adolphus Freak Octavius Liddell (1818–1885), who was appointed permanent under-secretary of state for the home department by Lord Derby in 1867. A son of Henry George Liddell, rector of Easington (the first baron's brother), was Henry George Liddell, D.D., dean of Christchurch. The first baron's father, Sir Henry St. George Liddell (1749–1791), made an eccentric journey to Lapland in 1786, probably in consequence of a wager, of which an account, with plates by Bewick, was published in 1789 by Matthew Consett, one of his companions.

Henry Thomas Liddell was educated at Eton and at St. John's College, Cambridge, where, though he did not graduate, he became a good classical scholar. In February 1826 he unsuccessfully contested the county of Northumberland in the tory interest. At the general election in June of the same year, after a poll of fifteen days, in which great sums of money were spent, Liddell and Matthew Bell were returned. He represented North Durham from 1837 to 1847. In 1852 he unsuccessfully contested South Shields, and from 1853 until 7 March 1855, when on the death of his father he succeeded to the peerage, he sat for Liverpool. On 21 Nov. 1826 he moved the address in the House of Commons, and frequently spoke on the tory side. Though he voted for the relief of Roman catholic disabilities, he steadily from 1829 opposed the Reform movement, and he strongly disapproved of the disestablishment of the Irish church. On 2 April 1874 he was created Earl of Ravensworth and Baron Eslington. He died suddenly at Ravensworth Castle on 19 March 1878. He married, on 8 Nov. 1820, Isabella Horatia (d. 1856), eldest daughter of Lord George Seymour, and by her had five sons and eight daughters, of whom the eldest, Henry George, second and present earl of Ravensworth, succeeded him.

Ravensworth was very popular in Northumberland, although in later life he found himself out of sympathy with the contemporary developments of conservatism.

He published in addition to speeches: 1. ‘The Wizard of the North, and other Poems,’ Edinburgh, 1833, 8vo. 2. ‘The Odes of Horace,’ London, 1858, 8vo; a translation into English verse. 3. ‘Carmina,’ London, 1865, 4to; a number of Latin poems, including translations of popular English lyrics. 4. ‘Virgil's Æneid, Books vii to xii,’ London, 1872, 8vo; a translation undertaken in conjunction with Mr. G. K. Richards, who had translated the first six books. 5. ‘Poems,’ Newcastle, 1877, 8vo.

[Burke's Peerage; Sharpe's Peerage; Times, 20 March 1878;