ANNALS 



OF 



PHILOSOPHY. 



JUNE, 1813^ 



Article I. 



Biographical Accoimt of the Rev, Nevil Maskelyve^ D. D. 

 Astronomer Roi/aL By M. le Chevalier Delarabre, Secretary 

 of the French Institute.* 



Nevil MASKELYNE, Doctor of Divinity, member of 

 Trinity College, Cambridge, Fellow ot the Royal Society, one of 

 the eight Foreign Associates of ihe Academy of Sciences, and of 

 the Class of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the Imperial 

 Institute, Astronomer Royal of England, was born in London 

 on the 6th of October, 1 732, of an ancient family which had 

 been long established in the west of England. 



At the age of nine he v/as placed at Westminster school, 

 where he speedily distinguished himself. He showed an early 

 taste for optics and astronomy; but what decided his vocation 

 was the eclipse of the sun of 1748, which was of ten digits in 

 London. It is remarkable that this eclipse produced the same 

 effect upon Lalande, who was only three months older than 

 Maskelyne. We may say with truth that never was celestial 

 phenomenon more useful to the science than the eclipse which 

 furnished it with two astronomers so singularly distinguished, 

 though in different ways: one of whom wrote a great deal, was 

 long a professor, and formed a great number of pupils, but 

 observed very little; while the other wrote less, but has left us, 

 in the collection of his observations, the greatest and most valua- 

 ble monument of the kind which exists. 



Maskelyne perceived how necessary the mathematics were in 

 the career which he proposed to run ; he sets himself accordingly 



* Translated from the Moniteurs for the 5th and 6th of March, 18ig. 



Vol, L VI, 2 C 



