1816.] Dr. John Robison. ‘ee 
that a ship’s crew may sail round the globe with less mortality than 
was to be expected in the same number of men living for an equal 
period in the most healthful village of their native country, 
Mr. Robison’s letters to his father about this time are strongly 
expressive of his dislike to the sea, and of his resolution to return 
to Glasgow, and to resume his studies, particularly that of theo- 
logy, with a view of entering into the church. These resolutions, 
however, were for the present suspended, by a very kind invitation 
from Admiral Knowles to come and live with him in the country, 
and to assist him in his experiments: “ ‘Thus (says the Admiral) we 
shall be useful to one another.” What these experiments were is 
not mentioned, but they probably related to ship-building, a subject 
which the Admiral had studied with great attention. Mr. Robison 
accordingly continued to enjoy a situation and an employment that 
must both have been extremely agreeable to him, till the month of 
February in the year following, when Lieut. Knowles was appointed 
to the command of the Peregrine sloop of war, of 20 guns. Whe- 
ther the plan of nautical instruction which Mr. Robison proposed 
for his pupil was not yet completed, or whether he had after all 
come to a resolution of pursuing a seafaring life (of which there is 
an appearance in some of his letters), he embarked in the Pere- 
grine, and he even mentions his hopes of being made purser to 
that ship. ‘he first service in which Capt. Knowles was employed 
was to convoy the fleet to Lisbon. In a letter from Plymouth, 
where they were forced in by the weather, Mr. Robison paints in 
strong colours the difference between sailing in a small ship, like 
the Peregrine, and a first rate, like the Royal William, and the 
uncomfortable situation of all on board, during a gale which they 
had experienced in coming down the Channel. The voyage, how- 
ever, gave him an opportunity of visiting Lisbon, on which the 
traces of the earthquake were yet deeply imprinted; and the ship 
continuing to cruise off the coast of Spain and Portugal, he had 
occasion to land at Oporto, and other places on the Portuguese 
coast. Inthe month of June he returned to England; and from 
this time quitted the navy, though he did not give up hopes of pre- 
ferment. He returned to live with Admiral Knowles, and in the 
end of the same summer was recommended by him to Lord Anson, 
the First Lord of the Admiralty, as a proper person to take charge 
of Harrison’s time-keeper, which, at the desire: of the Board of 
Longitude, was to be sent on a trial voyage to the West Indies. 
The ingenious artist just named had begun the construction of 
his chronometer on new principles as early as the year 1726, and, 
with the fortitude and patience characteristic of genius, had for 35 
years struggled against the physical difficulties of his undertaking, 
and the still more discouraging obstacles which the prejudice, the 
envy, or the indifference of his cotemporaries, seldom fail to plant 
in the way of an inventor. Notwithstanding all these, he had ad- 
vanced constantly from one degree of perfection to another, and it 
was his fourth time-keeper, reduced to a portable size, and im- 
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