100 S H A 
Painful; afflictive. 
That she may feel 
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is, 
To have a thankless child. Shakspeare. 
Fierce; ardent; fiery. 
Their piety feign’d, 
In sharp contest of battle found no aid. Milton. 
A sharp assault already is begun; 
Their murdering guns play fiercely on the walls. Dri/den. 
Attentive; vigilant. 
Sharp at her utmost ken she cast her eyes 
And somewhat floating from afar descries. Drt/den. 
Acrid ; biting; pinching; piercing, as the cold.—The 
windpipe is continually moistened with a glutinous humour, 
issuing out of small glandules in its inner coat, to fence it 
against the sharp air. Ray. —Subtile; nice; witty; acute: 
—Sharp and subtile discourses procure very great applause; 
but being laid in the balance with that which sound ex¬ 
perience plainly delivereth, they are overweighed. Hooker. 
—[Among workmen,] Hard. — They make use of the 
sharpest sand, that being best for mortar, to lay. bricks 
and tiles in. Moxon. —Emaciated; lean.—His visage drawn 
he felt to sharp and spare. Milton. 
SHARP, s. A sharp or acute sound. 
It is the lark that sings so out of tune, 
Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps. 
Shakspeare. 
A pointed weapon; small sword; rapier. Low word. — 
If butchers had but the manners to go to sharps, gentlemen 
would be contented with a rubber at cuffs. Collier. 
To SHARP, v. a. To make keen. 
Whom the whetstone sharps to eat. 
They cry millstones are good meat. B. Jonson. 
To render quick. 
Much more me needs— 
To sharp my sense with sundry beauties’ view, 
And steal from each some part of ornament. Spenser. 
To SHARP, v. 71. To play thievish tricks.—I live upon 
what’s my own ; whereas your scandalous life is only cheat¬ 
ing or sharping one half of the year, and starving the other. 
L' Estrange. 
SHARP (Abraham), an eminent mathematician, me¬ 
chanist and astronomer, was descended from a family of 
Little Horton, near Bradford, in Yorkshire, where he was 
born about 1651. After he had received a good education, 
he was put apprentice at Manchester, but being steadily 
attached to mathematical pursuits, he quitted business and 
removed to Liverpool. Here he applied with great dili¬ 
gence to his favourite study, and to procure a subsistence 
he opened a school, where he taught writing and the ele¬ 
ments of arithmetic. He next went to London, with the 
view of associating with Mr. Flamstead, by whose interest 
he obtained a profitable employment in the dock-yard at 
Chatham, where he remained till he was invited to become the 
assistant of Flamstead at the Royal Observatory at Green¬ 
wich. In this situation he continued to make observations, 
and had a large share in forming a catalogue of 3000 fixed 
stars, with their longitudes and magnitudes ; their right as¬ 
cension and polar distance, and the variations of the same, 
while they change their longitude by one degree. In this 
employment he injured his health, and was obliged to retire 
to his native air, at Horton, where he fitted up an observatory 
of his own, having constructed a very curious machine for 
turning all kinds of work in wood and brass. He con¬ 
structed most of the tools used by joiners, clock-makers, op¬ 
ticians, and mathematical instrument-makers. He manu¬ 
factured entirely his own telescopes and other astronomical 
instruments. 
He next materially assisted Mr. Flamstead in calculating 
most of the tables in the second volume of his “ Historia 
Celestis,” and made curious drawings of the constellations, 
which were sent to Amsterdam to be engraved, and though 
i R V . 
executed by a masterly hand, the originals were said to have 
exceeded the engravings in beauty and accuracy. In 1689 
Mr. Flamstead completed his mural arc at Greenwich, in 
which he had been greatly assisted by his friend Mr. Sharp, 
who had been some time in the observatory as his ama¬ 
nuensis. Mr. Smeaton, in a paper published in the philoso¬ 
phical Transactions for the year 1786, speaking of this 
mural arc, says, it may be considered as the first good in¬ 
strument of the kind, and that Mr. Sharp was the first per¬ 
son who cut accurate and delicate divisions upon astrono¬ 
mical instruments. 
In 1717, Mr. Sharp published a work entitled “ Geo¬ 
metry Improved,” in which he engraved the figures as well 
as composed the work. This treatise contains, 1. A large 
and accurate table of segments of circles, with the method 
of its construction, and various uses in the solution of diffi¬ 
cult problems. 2. A concise treatise of polyhedra, or solid 
bodies of many bases, both the regular and irregular ones, 
to which are added twelve new ones, with various methods 
of forming them, and their exact dimensions in words or 
species, and also in numbers. In the year 1699, he under¬ 
took, for his own private amusement, the quadrature of the 
circle, deduced from two different series, by which the truth 
of it was demonstrated to 72 places of figures. Mr. Sharp 
maintained an epistolary correspondence with the most emi¬ 
nent mathematicians and astronomers of the day; among 
these were the illustrious Newton, Dr. Halley and Dr. 
Wallis. It appears from a great variety of letters which 
remained after his death, written to him by these celebrated 
men, that he spared neither pains nor time to promote the 
interests of real science. Being justly reckoned one of the 
ablest calculators of his time, his assistance was required by, 
and freely given to Flamstead, Sir Josias Moore, Dr. Halley 
and others, in all difficult calculations. When he quitted 
Mr. Flamstead, he retired to Little Horton, in Yorkshire, 
where he spent the remainder of his days, and where he 
died in July 1742, in the 91st year of his age. He was of 
very retired habits, and admitted few visitors, excepting 
two gentlemen, at Bradford, one a mathematician, and 
the other an ingenious apothecary. Many of his singula¬ 
rities are recorded in the General Biography, and also in 
Hutton’s Mathematical Dictionary, to which the reader is 
referred. 
SHARP (John), archbishop of York, a celebrated divine 
of the church of England, was the son of a respectable 
tradesman at Bradford, in Yorkshire, where he was born in 
1644. He was admitted of Christ’s college, Cambridge, 
in 1660, and in 1667 he commenced master of arts, and 
was ordained. He was now appointed private tutor to the 
four sons of Sir Heneage Finch, a station which he occupied 
about five years, when he obtained, through his patron’s 
recommendation, the archdeaconry of Berkshire. When 
Sir Heneage was raised to the post of keeper of the great 
seal, he manifested such confidence in the fidelity and judg¬ 
ment of his friend, as to commit to him the scrutiny of 
the characters of applicants for church livings in the gift 
of the crown. A sermon which he preached in 1674, re¬ 
flecting upon those who dissented from the church, gave 
rise to a controversy, in which Dodwell, Baxter and others 
engaged. In 1677 he was instituted to the rectory of 
St. Giles-in-the-Fields, in which parish he resided ten years. 
Among his parishioners was Richard Baxter, who, though 
he was himself a preacher on Sunday evenings, was a con¬ 
stant hearer of the rector in the mornings; and these two 
excellent men, notwithstanding their differences in some 
points, lived together upon the most friendly terms. In 
1679 Mr. Sharp commenced D. D., and in 1681 he was 
promoted to the deanery of Norwich. On the death of 
Charles II., to whom he had been a chaplain, he drew up 
the address of the grand-jury of London to his successor, 
to whom he was also nominally chaplain. After this he 
preached against popery, and' thus exciting the royal dis¬ 
pleasure, he was obliged to quit the metropolis, and reside 
altogether at his deanery. He employed himself in form¬ 
ing a cabinet of coins, chiefly British, Saxon and English. 
Being wearied with his exclusion from his function at Lon- 
