his good influence is already felt throughout the land in the labours of the pupils of his pupils, and a large proportion of our best esteemed artists received their training personally from him. He died in 1871.—G. A. M.
POTTER, Francis, born in 1594 in Wilts, and educated at Oxford, became rector of Kilmington in Somerset in 1637. In this parish he continued till his death in 1678. In 1642 he published an "Interpretation of the Number 666," which was translated into several languages. To one of his opponents, Morehouse, he wrote a reply. He had a great love for painting and mechanics, and some of his inventions were communicated to the Royal Society, who made him a fellow.—B. H. C.
POTTER, John, Archbishop of Canterbury, son of a linen draper at Wakefield, was born about 1674; he was educated there, and at University college, Oxford. In 1694 he was chosen fellow of Lincoln. In 1697 he published "Lycophron's Alexandra," folio; and shortly after, his "Antiquities of Greece," a wonderful work for so young a man. In 1704 we find him removed to Lambeth, as chaplain to Archbishop Tenison, who gave him the living of Great Mongeham in Kent. Having in 1706 become chaplain-in-ordinary to Queen Mary, in 1707 he published his "Discourse of Church Government," 8vo. In 1708, through the influence of the duke of Marlborough, he became regius professor of divinity and canon of Christ Church; and in 1715, bishop of Oxford. Just before he had issued a noble edition of Clemens Alexandrinus, 2 vols., folio, Gr. and Lat. He preached the sermon at the coronation of George II.; and in 1737 was made archbishop of Canterbury. He died in 1747. A collection of his theological works was published in 3 vols., 8vo, Oxford, 1753. For many years his "Greek Antiquities" was the standard work upon that subject, and has only been superseded in consequence of modern discoveries.—T. J.
POTTER, Paul, was born at Enkhuysen in North Holland in 1625, and having learnt the first rudiments of his art from his father, Pieter Potter, he established himself while still young as an animal painter at the Hague; but his brilliant career was suddenly cut short in January, 1654, at the premature age of twenty-nine. Though his pictures were early sought after, Paul Potter acquired his general reputation by a single picture, the well-known "Young Bull," for some years in the Louvre, now in the museum at the Hague, painted for Prince Maurice of Nassau in 1647, when the painter was only twenty-two years old. It is certainly a masterpiece, but coarsely painted, and the accessories are very inferior. Potter's present reputation rests upon his numerous small pictures, which are executed with great delicacy; he excelled in pasture scenes, his animals being always admirable, and his colouring and lighting of his landscapes being generally beautiful. The marquis of Westminster has a fine specimen of these small pictures. The National gallery possesses no example of his work. There are also some admirable etchings of animals by Potter.—R. N. W.
POTTER, Robert, an English clergyman, born in 1721, was educated at Emmanuel-college, Cambridge. He took his degree of B.A. in 1741, became vicar of Seaming in Norfolk, and was afterwards appointed a prebendary of Norwich cathedral; latterly he held also the vicarage of Lowestoft and Kessingland. A sermon on the thanksgiving for the peace was published by him, but his fame rests chiefly on his acquirements as a classical scholar and his poetical works, of which the earliest was a volume of miscellaneous pieces printed in 1774. These were followed in the course of the next fourteen years by his admired translations from the Greek dramatists, Æschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles. They are well known, and likely to retain their popularity, on account of the fidelity and vigour with which they are executed. He attempted a more difficult task in his metrical versions of the Song of Adoration and the Oracle against Babylon, in the twelfth and fourteenth chapters of Isaiah. "Spirited and elegant" are the terms which Bishop Lowth has applied to the latter of these productions. Potter wrote also an "Inquiry into Passages of Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets," in which the critic's attack on Gray is examined and repelled. He died at Lowestoft in 1804.—W. B.
POTTINGER, Sir Henry, Bart., G.C.B., was descended from an English family which had long been settled in Ireland. He was the fifth son of Eldred Curwen Pottinger, Esq., of Mount Pottinger, County Down, and was born there in 1789. His rise in life was slow, but steady. He went to India as a cadet in 1804, and speedily recommended himself for promotion by his energy, extensive information, and administrative capacity. He was first employed for seven years as judge and collector at Ahmednuggar in the Deccan, and then for fifteen as political resident at Cutch and Scinde. The services which he rendered in these situations were deemed so important, that he was rewarded with a baronetcy after the Affghanistan campaign in 1839. In the following year he returned to England, but he had scarcely landed when war broke out between Great Britain and China on account of the disputes connected with the opium trade. In this emergency Sir Henry was sent to China as envoy extraordinary, and minister plenipotentiary, for the purpose of adjusting the matters in dispute. He set himself to this arduous task with vigour and address. On his arrival at Macao, August 12th, 1841, he issued a spirited proclamation, declaring that it was his intention to direct his undivided energies to the primary object of securing a speedy and satisfactory termination of the war. In concert with Admiral Parker he devised measures which soon led to the capture of Amoy, and brought hostilities to a successful issue. A treaty was concluded with the Chinese in 1842, which gave universal satisfaction, and not only threw open the trade with the teeming population of China, but was believed to afford a guarantee for an honourable and lasting peace. For these eminent services Sir Henry was rewarded with the grand cross of the order of the bath, and was subsequently appointed governor and commander-in-chief of the island of Hong Kong. On his return to England in 1844 he was sworn a member of the privy council, and a pension of £1500 a year was conferred upon him. In September, 1846, he was appointed governor of the Cape of Good Hope, an office which he held until the September of the following year, when he was again sent to India as governor and commander-in-chief of the presidency of Madras. In 1854 he finally returned to his native country. He died at Malta on the 18th of March, 1856, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. Sir Henry was not only an able and upright public officer, but a most estimable man in all the relations of private life.—J. T.
POUGET, François Aimé, a French ecclesiastic, a priest of the Oratory, doctor of the Sorbonne, and abbé of Chambon, was born at Montpellier in 1666. He was the author of a system of divinity entitled "The Catechism of Montpellier," highly esteemed for its clearness and elegance. He died at Paris in 1723.
POUNDS, John, the originator of ragged schools, was born at Portsmouth in 1766, and entered the royal dockyard in his boyhood as an apprentice shipwright. Having had the misfortune to break his thigh by a fall, and thus to become a cripple for life, he turned his attention to shoemaking, and finally became a cobbler. He was remarkable for his good-nature, and his industry and ingenuity. He adopted a crippled nephew, and succeeded in setting him upon his legs by an ingenious apparatus of old shoes and leather. He had a natural love for teaching, and liked to train jays, starlings, canaries, and other pets; and believing it as easy to instruct children, he became his nephew's schoolmaster. Thinking the boy, like his feathered domestics, would learn much better in company, he added first one, then a second to the number of his pupils, till the limits of his humble workshop were unable to contain more. In fine weather some of them sat by turns on the threshold of the front door, and on a little form outside. At other times they occupied every form and box and spare inch of the shop floor—the cobbler sitting on his stool in the middle mending his shoes, and teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic to his free scholars. His method of instruction was simple, yet ingenious, pleasant, and most effective. He taught the children to read from handbills, and such remains of old school-books as he could procure. The worst boys were, as a matter of course, least willing to come to his school, and it was the worst boys he wanted. He has been seen to follow such to the town quay, and hold out in his hand the bribe of a roasted potato to induce them to come to school. He encouraged them to go to Sunday schools, and provided for them decent Sunday clothing, which he kept in his own house during the rest of the week. He acted, too, as doctor and nurse to his "little blackguards," and was not only master of the sports, but contriver and maker of their playthings. For many years this genial old philanthropist pursued his labours of love, very little noticed and wholly unrewarded by his fellow-townsmen. At length, on the 1st of June, 1839, as he was looking at a picture of his school executed by Mr Sheaf, John Pounds fell down and expired, at the age of seventy-two. His death was felt severely by his poor destitute pupils. His memory is blessed.—J. T.
