but adds that ‘he applied them all in teaching matters about which he knew nothing,’ and so made himself ridiculous. Phillips was a friend of Priestley and of Orator Hunt, and a patron of Bamford and other radical contemporaries, and it was he who, after hearing Coleridge talk at a dinner-party, exclaimed that he wished he had him in a garret without a coat to his back. His chief importance was as a purveyor of cheap miscellaneous literature designed for popular instruction, and as the legitimate predecessor of the brothers Chambers and of Charles Knight.
The following are the chief of the works which are attributed to Phillips himself:
- ‘A Letter to the Livery of London relative to the Duties and Office of Sheriff,’ 1808, 12mo.
- ‘Treatise on the Powers and Duties of Juries, and on the Criminal Laws of England,’ 1811, 8vo.
- ‘Communications relative to the Datura Stramonium as a Cure for Asthma,’ 1811, 8vo.
- ‘A Morning's Walk from London to Kew,’ 1817 (1819 and 1820), 8vo; in this he airs original political and philosophical views.
- ‘The Proximate Causes of Material Phenomena,’ 1821 and 1824, 8vo; a pretentious volume on the principle of universal causation, which provoked De Morgan's anger.
- ‘Golden Rules of Social Philosophy,’ 1826, 8vo; this is dedicated to Simon Bolivar, and includes ‘Golden Rules’ for sovereign princes, for legislators, electors, sheriffs, jurymen, journalists, and others, besides ‘The Author's Reasons for not eating Animal Food.’
[A paper entitled ‘An Old Leicestershire Bookseller’ by F. S. Herne, in the Journal of the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society, contains much useful material for a biography of Phillips. See also Memoirs of the Public and Private Life of Sir R. Phillips, London 1808 (published during his shrievalty, upon materials ‘drawn from headquarters,’ and consequently far from entirely trustworthy); Gent. Mag. 1840, ii. 213–14; Biogr. Dict. of Living Authors, 1816, p. 271; Moore's Diary, iv. 296–297; Wilson's Noctes Ambrosianæ, ed. Mackenzie, i. 133, 266, ii. 420; Conway's Life of Paine, ii. 27; Bamford's Passages in the Life of a Radical, 1893, ii. 213; Fox-Bourne's English Newspapers, i. 299; Allibone's Dict. of English Literature; Nichols's Lit. Illustrations, viii. 512–13; Southey's Life and Correspondence, chap. xv.]
PHILLIPS, RICHARD (1778–1851), chemist, born in 1778, was the son of James Phillips, quaker, and a well-known printer and bookseller, of George Yard, Lombard Street, London. Catherine Phillips [q. v.] was his grandmother. Richard was educated as a chemist and druggist, under William Allen (1770–1843) [q. v.] of Plough Court, but received his first instructions in chemistry from Dr. George Fordyce [q. v.] With his elder brother, William (1775–1828) [q. v.], the geologist, William Allen, Luke Howard, and others, he founded the Askesian Society.
In 1817 he was appointed lecturer on chemistry at the London Hospital, and he also delivered several courses of lectures at the London Institution. Soon after he was appointed professor of chemistry at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and lecturer on chemistry at Grainger's school of medicine, Southwark. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1822, and was offered the presidentship of the Chemical Society on its foundation in 1841, but declined it. He became, however, its president for 1849–50. In 1839 he was appointed chemist and curator of the Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn Street, and he held the post till his death on 11 May 1851.
Phillips first attracted attention by his publication, in 1806, of ‘An Analysis of the Bath Water’ (cf. Tilloch's Phil. Mag.) His labours in mineralogical chemistry were characterised by great neatness and precision, and he discovered in 1823 the true nature of uranite; but it was in pharmaceutical chemistry that his services to science were most conspicuous. His acute powers and the perfect familiarity he possessed with the processes in use enabled him to detect the errors into which the compilers of the ‘London Pharmacopœia’ had fallen, and, though the keenness of his criticisms created much soreness, their justice was admitted, and he was specially consulted in compiling later editions.
He was the author of some seventy papers on chemical subjects. They appeared in various English and foreign journals, principally the ‘Annals of Philosophy,’ which he edited, in conjunction with Edward Edward William Brayley [q. v.], from 1821; and the ‘Philosophical Magazine,’ in which the ‘Annals’ was merged, and of which, as well as of the succeeding series, the ‘London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine,’ he was one of the editors. He was also author of all the chemical articles in the ‘Penny Cyclopædia.’
His separate works were, besides the book above mentioned:
- ‘An Experimental Examination of the latest edition of the Pharmacopœia Londinensis; with Remarks on Dr. Powell's Translation and Annotations,’ London, 1811, 8vo.
- ‘Remarks on the editio altera of the Pharmacopœia Londinensis,’ London, 1816, 8vo.
- A translation (with
