found more employment in crayons. In this line he showed some genius, and was making great progress when he died in January 1701 in his thirty-third year. He resided in Catherine Street, Strand, and was buried at Richmond, Surrey. He drew his own portrait in crayons twice, in one dressed as a Chinese, in the other as a quaker. One portrait of himself, dated 1690, was at Tart Hall, and another, dated 1696, was formerly in Sir Thomas Lawrence's collection, and was sold at Christie's on 27 March 1866.
[De Piles's Lives of Painters; Vertue's MSS. Addit. MS. Brit. Mus. 23068; Walpole's Anecd. of Painting, ed. Dallaway and Wornum; Manning and Bray's Hist. of Surrey, i. 433.]
GIBSON, FRANCIS (1753–1805), miscellaneous writer, son of Joseph and Mary Gibson of Whitby, Yorkshire, was baptised at Whitby 16 Jan. 1753. He became a seaman, voyaged to North America, and afterwards, as master mariner in a ship of his father's, to the Baltic. In 1787 he was, on the recommendation of Lord Mulgrave, appointed to the collectorship of customs at Whitby, which office he held till his death, 24 July 1805. He was twice married, and had issue.
Gibson wrote: 1. ‘Sailing Directions for the Baltic,’ 1791. These are said to have been employed with advantage by the Copenhagen expedition of 1801 under Sir Hyde Parker and Nelson. 2. ‘Streanshall Abbey, or the Danish Invasion,’ Whitby, 1800. This is a play in five acts, dedicated to Lady Mulgrave. It was first performed at the Whitby Theatre 2 Dec. 1799. It went through two (probably limited) editions in the year of its publication. 3. ‘Memoirs of the Bastile,’ a translation of an account published under the sanction of the National Assembly of France, Whitby, 1802. 4. ‘Poetical Remains,’ Whitby, 1807.
[Life by W. Watkins, prefixed to Poetical Remains.]
GIBSON, GEORGE STACEY (1818–1883), botanist and philanthropist, was born 20 July 1818 at Saffron Walden, Essex, being the only son of Wyatt George Gibson, a lineal descendant of Sir Henry Wyatt. His mother's maiden name was Deborah Stacey. Born to ample private means, though occupied by a large banking business and many charitable institutions, especially those connected with the Society of Friends, of which he was for many years ‘clerk of the yearly meeting,’ he at an early age imbibed a taste for botany. His keen observing powers added six species to the known British flora, and furnished the material for a series of interesting communications to the ‘Phytologist’ between 1842 and 1851. He also communicated to Hewett Watson records of plants from various counties of England, Wales, and Scotland. In 1845 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Samuel Tuke of York, and in 1847 became a fellow of the Linnean Society. In 1862 he published ‘The Flora of Essex,’ the result of nearly twenty years' work, which was in several respects an advance on preceding county floras. After this date other duties took him away from active scientific work; but he retained to the last a keen interest in science, especially photography, electric lighting, and the rearrangement of the excellent local museum at Walden. He was senior partner of the firm of Gibson, Tuke, & Gibson, and in 1877 and 1878 held the office of mayor of his native town, the charities of which he endowed munificently both during his life and at his death. He died of kidney disease, in Bishopsgate Street, London, on 5 April 1883. Exactitude and conscientiousness were his characteristics alike in science and in business, and he modestly submitted all his botanical discoveries to the judgment of his friends William Borrer, Edward Forster, and Professor C. C. Babington. His herbarium is in the Saffron Walden Museum.
[Memoirs, illustrated by two different portraits, in Journ. of Bot. 1883, and in Trans. Essex Field Club, vol. iv., by G. S. Boulger.]
GIBSON, JAMES, D.D. (1799–1871), Free church polemic, was born at Crieff, Perthshire, on 31 Jan. 1799, went to school in his native place, and entered the university of Glasgow in his twelfth year. Towards the close of his preparatory course he became tutor in a Lanarkshire family, and in 1820 was licensed to preach by the presbytery of Hamilton. He afterwards accepted a situation as tutor in a Roxburghshire family, where he remained more than three years. In 1825 he became travelling companion to Captain Elliot, a cousin to the Earl of Minto. They went to Portugal and resided a considerable time in Lisbon. Returning to Glasgow Gibson was appointed assistant to the Rev. Mr. Steel, of the West Church, Greenock. After two years of work he made another continental tour with a pupil, receiving a testimonial from the Greenock congregation on his departure. In these tours he specially studied the moral and religious condition of the countries visited. Gibson was afterwards appointed assistant to Dr. Lockhart in the college parish, Glasgow, and received ordination as a minister. He was distinguished for accurate scholarship, a well cultivated mind, and sincere piety, but was not an attractive or effective preacher. He was drawn into the voluntary controversy as a de-
