to 1795, and to the Archceologia in 1777, as well as by bis generosity to artists and antiquaries, such as Morghen, Winckelmann, and Piaggi. Recalled in 1800, he died
April 6, 1803.Sir William Hamilton s second wife, Emma Lyon or Harte, whose name is so notoriously associated with that of Nelson, was born of very humble parents at Preston in Lancashire, about April 26, 1764. Her youth was spent in domestic service, and it was first as attendant on a lady of fashion that she learned to develop her talent for sing ing and mimicry. Having lost this situation she became waitress in a tavern frequented by actors, and soon entered upan a gay and dissolute career. Her beauty attracted among others the painter Romney, who depicted her in no fewer than twenty-three of his works. Sir William Hamilton married her in 1791 ; and, going with him the sama year to Naples, she speedily acquired an ascendency over the mind cf the queen, which at the instigation of Nelson she used for the advantage of the British fleet. On the death of Sir William she lived in a house at Merton Place, provided for her by Nelson, but on his death in 1805 she soon squandered the modest fortune left her by her husband, and after being imprisoned for debt, retired with Nelson s daughter Horatia to Calais, where she died, January 16, 1815. Her Memoirs appeared in the year of her death.
HAMILTON, William (1704–1754), a minor Scottish post, the author of The Braes of Yarrow, was born in 1704, probably at Bangour in Linlithgowshire, the second son of James Hamilton of Bangour, a member of the Scottish bar. It is supposed that he studied at the uni versity of Edinburgh ; and it is certain that he received an education which enabled him to enjoy the classical writers of Greece and Rome, and to be a congenial associate in after years with such men as Allan Ramsay and Henry Home. As early as 1724 we find him contributing to Ramsay s Tea Table Miscellany, In 1745 Hamilton joined the cause of Prince Charles, and, though it is doubtful whether he actu ally bore arms, he certainly celebrated the battle of Preston- pans in an ode beginning " As over Gladsmuir s blood stained fi^ld." After the disaster of Culloden he lurked for several months in the Highlands, and at length escaped to France; but in 1749 the influence of his friends at home procured him permission to return to Scotland, and in the following year he obtained possession of the family estate of Bangour. In 1751 he married for the second time, but the state of his health was such that he soon afterwards went abroad, and he died at Lyons on 25th March 1754.
Hamilton has left behind him a considerable number of what are best described as poetical effusions, many of them pleasing and taste ful, but none of them except the Braes of Yarrow of striking origin ality. The first collection of his pieces was published without his permission or even knowledge by Foul is (Glasgow, 1748), and intro duced by a preface from the pen of Adam Smith. Another edition with corrections by himself was brought out by his friends in 1760, and to this was prefixed a portrait engraved by Sir Robert Strange. Though the poems have been since reprinted in Anderson s British Poets (vol. ix.), in Sharpe s Collection of the British Pods, and in Chalmers s English Poets (vol. xv.), there was no separate edition between 1760 and 1850, when James Faterson edited The Poems and Sonff.1 of William Hamilton. This volume contains several poems till then unpublished, and presents a bibliographical intro duction and life of the author.
Sac also James Chalmers s " Notices of Life of William Hamilton" in Transactionsof Society of Scottish Antiquaries, vol. iii., 1831 ; and Charles Mackay, The Poetical Works of Allan Ramsay, with Selec tions from the Scottish Poets before Burns.
HAMILTON, Sir William Rowan (1805–1865), one of the really great mathematicians of the present century, was born in Dublin, August 4, 1805. His father, who was a solicitor, and his uncle (curate of Trim), migrated from Scotland in youth. A branch of the Scottish family to which they belonged had settled in the north of Ireland in the time of James I., and this fact seems to have given rise to the common impression that Hamilton was an Irishman.
His genius displayed itself, even in his infancy, at first in the form of a wonderful power of acquiring languages. At the age of seven he had already made very considerable progress in Hebrew, and before be was thirteen he had acquired, under the care of his uncle, who was an extra ordinary linguist, almost as many languages as he had years of age. Among these, besides the classical and the modern European languages, were included Persian, Arabic, Hindu stani, Sanskrit, and even Malay. But though to the very end of his life he retained much of the singular learning of his childhood and youth, often reading Persian and Arabic in the intervals of sterner pursuits, he had long abandoned them as a study, and employed them merely as a relaxation.
His mathematical studies seem to have been undertaken and carried to their full development without any assistance whatever, and the result is that his writings belong to no particular " school," unless indeed we consider them to form, as they are well entitled to do, a school by themselves. As an arithmetical calculator he was not only wonderfully expert, but he seems to have occasionally found a positive delight in working out to an enormous number of places of decimals the result of some irksome calculation. At the age of twelve he engaged Colburn, the American " cal culating boy," who was then being exhibited as a curiosity in Dublin, and he had not always the worst of the encounter. But, two years before, he had accidentally fallen in with a Latin copy of Euclid, which he eagerly devoured ; and at twelve he attacked Newton s Arithmetica Universalis. This was his introduction to modern analysis. He soon commenced to read the Principia, and at sixteen he had mastered a great part of that work, besides some more modern works on analytical geometry and the differential calculus.
About this period he was also engaged in preparation for entrance at Trinity College, Dublin, and had therefore to devote a portion of his time to classics. In the summer of 1822, in his seventeenth year, he began a systematic study of Laplace s Mecanique Celeste. Nothing could be better fitted to call forth such mathematical powers as those of Hamilton ; for Laplace s great work, rich to profusion in analytical processes alike novel and powerful, demands from the most gifted student careful and often laborious study. It was in the successful effort to open this treasure-house that Hamilton s mind received its final temper. " Des-lors il commen^a a marcher seul," to use the words of the bio grapher of another great mathematician. From that time he appears to have devoted himself almost wholly to original investigation (so far at least as regards mathe matics), though he ever kept himself well acquainted with the progress of science both in Britain and abroad.
Having detected an important defect in one of Laplace s demonstrations, he was induced by a friend to write out his remarks, that they might be shown to Dr Brinkley, after wards bishop of Cloyne, but who was then royal astro nomer for Ireland, and an accomplished mathematician. Brinkley seems at once to have perceived the vast talents of young Hamilton, and to have encouraged him in the kindest manner. He is said to have remarked in 1823 of this lad of eighteen, " This young man, I do not say will be, but is, the first mathematician of his age."
Amongst a number of competitors of more than ordinary merit, he was first in every subject, and at every examina tion. His is said to be the only recent case in which a student obtained the honour of an optime in more than one subject. This distinction had then become very rare, not being given unless the candidate displayed a thorough
mastery over his subject. Hamilton received it for Greek
