S A S 





S A V 



Francis I. commissioned from him the picture of tHadtid 



( 'lirist, with the Virgin, &c. which is now in the Louvre. 



ton- Upon the invit ition of that monarch he went to France, 



^ "Y"""*' where he was received with the greatest distinction, 



and received 300 crowns in gold for a portrait of the 



iphin. He pointed many pictures for the French 

 nobility ; and for Francis I. he executed the picture of 

 . Charity now in the Louvre. While he was engaged 

 on the portrait of the queen mother, he was urged by 

 his wife to return to Florence. The king not only 

 gave him leave, on condition that he would return 

 in a few months with his family, and settle in France, 

 hut also made him liberal presents, and even intrusted 

 him with a large sum of money, in order to purchase 

 statues and pictures for the royal collection. Misled 

 by the profligacy of his wife, he forgot his engagement 

 to the French monarch, and squandered away the mo- 

 ney with which he was intrusted. The poverty into 

 which he thus fell, and the reproofs of his own con- 

 science, brought upon him the greatest distress, and he 

 at last died of the plague in the year 1530, in the 42d 

 5 r ear of his age. 



The most celebrated picture of Sarto is his Madonna 

 del Sacco, so called from Joseph reclining on a sack of 

 grain. It is considered as little inferior to the produc- 

 tion of Raphael. See PAINTING, Vol. XVI. p. 238. 



SASSARI, a town in the island of Sardinia. It is 

 situated on an elevated plain, and is well built, and en- 

 circled with a wall. It stands on the river Torre, which 

 forms at its embouchure the harbour called Porta 

 Torre, about nine miles below the town. There are a 

 great number of churches and religious houses in the 

 town, and the environs of it are adorned with shady 

 walks and fountains, one of which, called the Fountain 

 of Rosella, built of marble, is said to equal the most 

 splendid of the Roman fountains. The university was 

 founded in 1777. There are some inferior seminaries ; 

 but education is not in general request. Population 

 about 30,000, East Long. 8 45', North Lat. 40 48'. 



SATELLITES. See ASTRONOMY, Vol. II. p. 623, 

 644, 672, 685, 706. 



SATELLITE MACHINE. See PLANETARY MA- 

 CHINES, Vol. XVI. p. 626, 643. 



SATURN. See ASTRONOMY, Vol. II. p. 646, 672, 

 711, 708. 



SAUMUR, a town of France, and principal place 

 of a district in the department of the Maine and 

 Loire. It is agreeably situated on the right bank of 

 the Loire, which here encloses an island, at which there 

 are two stone bridges. One of them from the southern 

 bank to the island is very handsome, and consists of 

 twelve elliptical arches sixty feet in span. The prin- 

 cipal street which follows the line of the bridge, con- 

 tains the theatre and several other handsome edifices. 

 There are several squares in the town. The castle, 

 now a military depot, is an old building flanked with 

 towers, and stands on an eminence commanding the 

 town. There is in the neighbourhood a bridge called 

 Pont Fouchard, completed in 1816, on a river parallel 

 to the Loire, and having three arches of great span. ' 

 Population 9585. West Longitude 3", North Lati- 

 tude 47 15'. 



SAUNDERSON, NICHOLAS, a remarkable profes- 

 sor of mathematics, was born at Thurlston near Pen- 

 niston in Yorkshire in 1682. When he was only a 

 year old he lost his sight from the small-pox ; but 

 having evinced at an early age very great abilities, 

 his father who possessed a very small estate, and held 

 an office in the excise, sent him to the free school of 

 Penniston, where he acquired a knowledge of Greek 



VOL. XVII. PART II. 



and Latin. While instructing him in arithmetic, hit 

 father discovered his turn for mathematics, and be in- 

 troduced him to Kichard West, l.iq. who undertook to 

 ut him in algebra and geometry. 



After studying a short time at the dissenter's aca- 

 demy at Attercliff near Sheffield, he took up his residence 

 in Christ's College, Cambridge, in J7<>7, with the view 

 of being admitted a member of that house. He was li- 

 berally indulged with apartments and with the use of 

 t'.c library, and he soon began a series of lecture* on 

 the Universal arithmetic, the Optics, and the Principia 

 of Sir Isaac Newton. In this way he was led to cor- 

 respond with Sir Isaac Newton himself on some of the 

 more difficult parts of his writings. Upon the ejection 

 of Mr. Whiston from the Lucasian professorship of ma- 

 thematics iu 1711, Mr. Saunderson obtained from the 

 queen a mandamus to confer upon him the degree 

 of A. M. and on the recommendation of Sir Isaac 

 Newton, he was nominated Mr. Whiston's successor. 

 In 1723, he married the daughter of the Rev. Mr. 

 Dickens, rector of Cox worth, by whom he had two 

 children, a son and a daughter ; and in 1728, when 

 George II. visited the university, Saunderson, while 

 attending on his majesty in the senate, was, by the 

 royal mandate, created doctor of laws. 



Though of a strong constitution, Mr. Saunderson 

 suffered much from his sedentary habits, and he was 

 seized with a numbness in his limbs, which termina- 

 ted in a mortification in his foot, of which he died on 

 the 19th April 1739, in the 57th year of his age. 



Dr. Saunderson left behind him a ' System of Al- 

 gebra," in 2 vols. 4to. which was published in 1740, 

 and to which is prefixed an account of his life. See 

 our article BLIND, Vol. III. p. fiOO. 



SAVAGE, RICHARD, an English poet, more cele- 

 brated for his vices and his misfortunes than for his 

 talents ; was the son of the Countess of Macclesfield, 

 and Richard Savage, Earl of Rivers. He was born in 

 January 1697, and though Lord Rivers took upon him- 

 self the care of the boy, yet his mother, who seems to 

 have cherished for him the most unnatural dislike, 

 put him under the care of a poor woman, who under- 

 took to educate him as her own child, and to keep 

 him ignorant of the circumstances of his birth. Al- 

 though he now bore the name of his nurse, yet Lady 

 Macclesfield's mother paid him some concealed atten- 

 tion, and contrived to have him placed at the school 

 of St. Albans. Lord Rivers was at that time on his 

 death-bed, and having expressed his resolution to leave 

 Richard 6000, Lady Macclesfield frustrated his de- 

 sign by telling him that he was dead. Having failed 

 in a scheme of sending this unfortunate youth to the 

 plantations in North America, he was bound appren- 

 tice to a shoemaker. The death of his supposed mo- 

 ther gave him an opportunity of perusing some letters, 

 which disclosed to him the secrets of his birth. Quitting 

 his humble profession, he sought by every means in his 

 power to conciliate the affections of his mother, who 

 had now married Colonel Brett ; but she spurned him 

 from her with the most unnatural harshness, and on 

 one occasion, when he had walked into her house, im- 

 pelled by a resistless curiosity to see the being to whom 

 he owed his existence, he was immediately turned to 

 the door under the pretence that he sought her life. 



Being now destitute of every means of support. 

 Savage turned his thoughts towards literature. His 

 first compositions were a poem and two plays, taken 

 from Spanish comedies, and entitled, <' Woman's 

 Riddle," and " Love in a Veil ;" but he gained from 

 them no other advantage than the acquaintance of Sir 

 Sz 



