as he says, of drawing pictures, in which he never strove to excel, he resolved to go to London, in the hope of finding employment as a teacher of mechanics and astronomy. Having written out a proof of a new astronomical truth which had occurred to him, namely, that the moon must move always in a path concave to the sun, he shewed his proposition and its demonstration to Mr. Folkes, the President of the Royal Society, who thereupon took him the same evening to the meeting of that learned body. This had the effect of bringing him immediately into notice. He soon after published his first work, 'A Dissertation on the Phenomena of the Harvest Moon,' with the description of a new Orrery, having only four wheels. Of this work he says, with his characteristic modesty, "Having never had a grammatical education, nor time to study the rules of just composition, I acknowledge that I was afraid to put it to the press; and for the same cause I ought to have the same fears still." It was, however, well received by the public; and its ingenious author afterwards followed it up by various other productions, most of which became very popular. In 1748 he began to give public lectures on his favourite subjects, which were numerously and fashionably attended, his late Majesty George III., who was then a boy, being occasionally among his auditors. He had till now continued to work at his old profession of a portrait painter; but about this time he at last bade it a final farewell, having secured another, and, in his estimation, a much more agreeable means of providing a subsistence for himself and his family. Soon after the accession of George III., a pension of fifty pounds per annum was bestowed upon him from the privy purse. In 1763 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society; the usual fees being remitted, as had been done in the cases of Newton and Thomas |