BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
SIR JOSEPH BANKS[1]
The name of Sir Joseph Banks is pre-eminent amongst the many distinguished scientific men who adorned the long reign of George the Third, and his career practically coincides with the reign of that monarch, closing in the same year. The hold he has always had on popular estimation is perhaps less due to his high position in the royal favour, or his long tenancy of the presidential chair of the Royal Society, than to the prominent part he took in the voyage of H.M.S. Endeavour under Lieutenant Cook, and his contributions to Hawkesworth's account of it. Cook's story is that of a sailor, and his account of his discoveries is rendered more attractive by the introduction of passages from the more graphic pages of Banks's Diary: it is these passages which attracted so much attention in the narrative drawn up by Dr. Hawkesworth. Cook's own Journal, recently published by Admiral Wharton, shows this very clearly, and the naturalist’s own record of their discoveries and adventures is now for the first time given to the public.
Joseph Banks was born in Argyle Street, London, on 2nd February 1743 (o.s.). He was the son of William Banks (sometime Sheriff of Lincolnshire and M.P. for Peterborough), of Revesby Abbey, Lincolnshire, a gentleman of some fortune, due to his father's successful practice of medicine in that
- ↑ No adequate Life of Sir Joseph Banks having as yet appeared, the compiler of the following notes is indebted mainly for his information to Weld's History of the Royal Society, Sir John Barrow's Sketches of the Royal Society and the Royal Society Club, to Mr. B. Daydon Jackson's article on Banks in the Dictionary of National Biography, and to scattered incidental notices.
