PHILLIPS, John (1800-1874), one of the foremost of the early geologists of England, was born 25th December 1800 at Marden in Wiltshire. His father belonged to an old Welsh family, but settled in England as an officer of excise and married the sister of William Smith, the “Father of English Geology.” Both parents dying when he was a child, Phillips passed into the care of his uncle. Before his tenth year he had attended four schools, until he entered the old school at Holt Spa, Wiltshire, where he remained for five years, gaining among other acquisitions that taste for classical learning which remained one of his distinguishing traits to the end. From school he went to the house of the Rev. B. Richardson, an accomplished naturalist, in whose charge he remained a year, and from whom he obtained not only much knowledge but the strong bent towards the study of nature which thenceforth became the master-pursuit of his life. His uncle, “Strata Smith,” at that time lived in London, where he exercised the profession of a civil and mining engineer, though a very large part of his time and earnings was given to the preparation of those maps of England and the English counties on which his fame now rests. In his zeal for geological pursuits Smith often neglected his proper professional work, until, as his nephew said, “he had thrown into the gulf of the Strata all his patrimony and all his little gains.” Eventually he gave up his London house and wandered about the country, as the requirements of his maps led him. From the time that young Phillips joined his uncle in London he remained constantly with him, sharing in every piece of professional work, in the preparation of every book and map, and in every tour for fresh geological information. A youth so trained could ...not fail to become a geologist. In the spring of 1824 Smith went to York to deliver a course of lectures on geology, and his nephew accompanied him. This was the starting-point in Phillips’s career. His extensive knowledge of natural science and especially of fossils was now turned to account. He accepted engagements in the principal Yorkshire towns to arrange their museums and give courses of lectures on the collections contained therein. York became his residence, where he obtained the situation of keeper of the Yorkshire Museum and secretary of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society. From that centre he extended his operations to other towns beyond the county; and in 1831 he included University College, London, in the sphere of his activity. In that year the British Association for the Advancement of Science was founded at York, and Phillips was one of the active minds who organized its machinery. He became the assistant general secretary, a post of great labour and proportionate usefulness, which he held for upwards of thirty years. In 1834 he accepted the professorship of geology at King’s College, London, but retained his post at York, coming up to London every year to give a course of lectures there. This arrangement lasted for six years, until, in 1840, he resigned his charge of the York Museum and was appointed one of the staff of the Geological Survey of Great Britain under De la Beche. In this connexion he spent some time in studying the Palaeozoic fossils of Devon, Cornwall, and west Somerset, of which he published descriptions and illustrations. Thereafter he made a detailed survey of the region of the Malvern Hills, of which he prepared the elaborate account that appears in vol. ii. of the Memoirs of the Survey. His direct connexion with the National Survey was but of short duration, for in 1844 he accepted the professorship of geology in the university of Dublin. Nine years later, on the death of Strickland, who had acted as substitute for Dr Buckland in the readership of geology in the university of Oxford, Phillips succeeded to the post of deputy, and eventually, at the dean’s death, became himself reader, a post singularly congenial to him, and which he held up to the time of his own death, which was almost tragic in its suddenness. He dined at All Souls’ College on 23d April 1874, but in retiring slipped and fell headlong down a flight of stairs. Paralysis at once ensued, and he expired on the afternoon of the next day. In 1864 he had been elected president of the British Association.
Phillips was distinguished among his contemporaries for the sweetness and bright cheerfulness of his nature. He had great fluency as a speaker, and always spoke in so pleasant and interesting a manner as to make him a welcome and indeed indispensable interlocutor at the annual gatherings of the British Association. His social gifts were not less conspicuous than his attainments in science. But he was not a mere geologist. His sympathies went actively forth into the whole domain of science, and he himself contributed largely to astronomical literature as well as to meteorology.
From the time when he wrote his first paper in 1826 “On the Direction of the Diluvial Currents in Yorkshire” down to the last days of his life Phillips continued a constant contributor to the literature of his science. The pages of the Journal of the Geological Society, the Geological Magazine, and other publications of the day are full of valuable essays by him. He was also the author of numerous separate works, some of which had an extensive sale and were of great benefit in extending a sound knowledge of geology. Among these may be specially mentioned: Illustrations of the Geology of Yorkshire (1835); A Treatise on Geology (1837- 39); Memoirs of William Smith, the Father of English Geology (1844); The Rivers, Mountains, and Sea-Coast of Yorkshire (1853); Manual of Geology, Practical and Theoretical (1855); Life on the Earth: its Origin and Succession (1860); Vesuvius (1869); Geology of Oxford and the Thames Valley (1871). To these should be added his monographs in the Memoirs of the Geological Survey and the publications of the Palaeontographical Society, and his geological sections and maps.
PHILLIPS, Samuel (1815-1854), an industrious and successful litterateur, was the son of a Jewish tradesman in Regent Street, London, and was born in 1815. A somewhat precocious talent for mimicry and recitation had disposed his parents to train him for the stage; but they were afterwards induced, through the advice of the duke of Sussex, to send the lad to University College, London. After remaining a year at that institution Phillips proceeded to the university of Göttingen. Having renounced the Jewish faith, he returned shortly afterwards to England and entered Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, with the design of taking orders. His father’s death, however, altered his plans; and, after an unsuccessful attempt, in conjunction with his brother, to carry on his father’s business, he in 1841 took to literature as a profession. His first work, the novel of Caleb Stukely, appeared originally in the pages of Blackwood’s Magazine, and he subsequently contributed other anonymous tales to that and to other periodicals. In 1845 he began, through the interest of Lord Stanley, to write political leaders for the Morning Herald ∙, and about the same time he obtained an appointment as literary critic on the staff of the Times. In the following year he purchased the John Bull newspaper, which he edited for only a year; for, finding his strength, which was slowly wasting under the influence of confirmed consumption, quite unequal to such laborious work, he was constrained to abandon the undertaking. From that period till his death Phillips worked cheerfully and courageously as literary critic for the Times, and also wrote an occasional review for the Literary Gazette. Two anonymous volumes of Essays from the Times were published by him in 1852 and 1854. They are written in a light, dashing, picturesque style, sometimes eloquent, frequently bitter, and with a tolerable show of fairness. Phillips took an active part in the formation of the Crystal Palace Company. He was appointed their literary director; he wrote their Guide to the Crystal Palace and Park, and the Portrait Gallery of the Crystal Palace. In 1852 the university of Göttingen conferred upon him the honorary degree of LL.D. He died at Brighton on the 14th of October 1854.
PHILLIPS, Thomas (1770-1845), portrait and subject painter, was born at Dudley in Warwickshire on 18th October 1770. Having acquired the art of glass-painting at Birmingham, he visited London in 1790 with an introduction to Benjamin West, who found him employment on the windows in St George’s chapel at Windsor. In 1792 Phillips painted a view of Windsor Castle, and ere the two succeeding years had passed he exhibited the Death of Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, at the Battle of Castillon, Ruth and Naomi, Elijah restoring the Widow’s Son, Cupid disarmed by Euphrosyne, and other pictures of that class. From the year 1796, however, he seems to have mainly confined himself to portrait-painting; and it was in this walk that he was destined to acquire his reputation as an artist. It was not long before he became the chosen painter of men of genius and talent, notwithstanding the rivalry of Hoppner, Owen, Jackson, and Lawrence; and he has left behind him portraits of nearly all the illustrious characters of his day. His works of this kind are distinguished by simplicity, careful and finished handling, and truth of portraiture, but in colour they are commonly cold and feeble. In 1804 he was elected associate and four years later member of the Royal Academy. In 1824 Phillips succeeded Fuseli as professor of painting to the Royal Academy, an office which he held till 1832. During this period he delivered ten Lectures on the History and Principles of Painting, which were published in 1833. He likewise wrote a large number of the articles on the fine arts in Rees’s Cyclopaedia. He died on the 20th of April 1845.
PHILLIPS, William (1775-1828), an able mineralogist and geologist, who did much to foster in Britain the study of the sciences to which he was devoted, was born in May 1775. His Outline of Mineralogy and Geology was published in 1815 and passed through several editions. His Introduction to the Knowledge of Mineralogy, published in 1816, was for upwards of forty years one of the standard text-books in that science. Successive editions of it were brought out under different editors after his death. It was specially distinguished by its elaborate crystallographic details, based upon measurements with Wollaston’s reflecting goniometer. But it is chiefly the services rendered by Phillips to the science of geology, then in its infancy, that entitle his name to grateful recollection.. In addition to the first work above-named, he published in 1818 a most useful digest of English geology, under the title of A Selection of Facts, from the best Authorities, arranged so as to form an Outline of the Geology of England and Wales. This little volume contained a geological map of the country, based on that of W. Smith and some horizontal sections. Its importance in geological literature is to be found mainly in the fact that it formed the foundation of the larger work undertaken by Phillips in conjunction with W. Conybeare, of which only the first part was published, entitled Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales; and comparative Views of the Structure of Foreign Countries (1822). This volume made an era in geology. As a model of careful original observation, of judicious compilation, of succinct description, and of luminous arrangement it has been of the utmost service in the development of geology in Britain. Phillips was a member of the Society of Friends. He was a Fellow of the Royal, Geological, and other learned societies. He died in 1828.
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