The Life of Samuel Johnson - James Boswell [758]
Forbes, Sir William, of Pitsligo (1739–1806), banker and benefactor; leading member of the Merchants’ Company of Edinburgh; author of the autobiography Memoirs of a Banking-House (published i860); actively involved in almost all charitable establishments in Edinburgh; close friend of James Beattie and J.B.; member of the Literary Club; friend of Joshua Reynolds; witness in Lord Melville’s impeachment (1806): 539, 540, 563, 564, 635, 644
Ford, Cornelius (1632–1709): 31
Fordyce, Dr George (1736–1802), physician; licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians (1765); physician to St Thomas’s Hospital; friend of Joshua Reynolds, Garrick, Gibbon and R. B. Sheridan; member of the Literary Club (from 1774); admitted to the Royal College of Physicians (speciali grati) (1787); Goulstonian lecturer (1789); Harveian orator (1791); author of Elements of the Practice of Physic (1770) and A Treatise on Digestion and Food (1791); famed for a remarkable memory: 252, 408, 433, 943
Fordyce, Dr James (1720–96), Church of Scotland minister and moralist; one of the most celebrated and fashionable preachers of the 1760s in London; author of Sermons to Young Women (1765) and Addresses to Young Men (1777); sole pastor atMonkwell Street (1760–82); social connection with J.B. andS.J.: 210, 995
Forrester, Colonel James (fl. 1734), author of The Polite Philosopher: 530
Forster, George (1754–94), naturalist: 620
Foster, Mrs Elizabeth (c. 1690–1754), Milton’s grand-daughter: 127
Fothergill, Dr Thomas (c. 1716–96), provost of Queen’s College, Oxford; vice-chancellor: 439, 441 and n. a
Foulis, Andrew (1712–75), and Robert (1707–76), Glasgow printers and booksellers: 464
Fox, Charles James (1749–1806), politician; leader of the Whigs, then Foxite faction; member of the Club and the Dilettanti; mentored by Burke until their irrevocable rupture (1791); MP for Westminster with only brief interruption (1780–1806); sometime correspondent of Thomas Jefferson; Foreign Secretary (1782-3); headed the Fox-North coalition (1783); antagonistic to George III; self-confessed Francophile (pro-Revolution); Foreign Secretary in the ‘ministry of all the talents’ (1806); suffered from, and characterized by, long exclusion from office; little or no connection with organized religion: 252, 408, 433, 660, 664, 667, 857, 910,917, 918,926
Francklin, Dr Thomas (1721–84), Church of England clergyman and writer; professor of Greek at Cambridge University (1750); king’s chaplain (1767); contributor to Smollett’s Critical Review; chaplain to the Royal Academy (1768); acquaintance of S.J. and Joshua Reynolds; translated Sophocles (1759) and The Works of Lucian (2 vols., 1780); playwright– The Earl of Warwick (1766) and Matilda (1775): 189
Franklin, Benjamin (1706–90), natural philosopher, writer and revolutionary politician in America; only person to sign all three fundamental documents of American statehood – the Declaration of Independence (1776), the peace treaty with Britain (1783) and the constitutionofthe United States (1787); proved there was only one Kind of electricity with his Law of conservation (1747); most famous natural philosopher sinceIsaac Newton after hisExperiments and Observations on Electricity (pub.1751); Justice of the Peace then president of the Supreme Executive Council for Philadelphia; most noted pro-American statesman and intermediary in Anglo-American politics; commissioner to negotiate the peace following General Cornwallis’s surrender to George Washington (1781): 431, 656, 781, 1000 n. c
Fraser, Lieutenant General Simon (1726–82), master of Lovat: 520
Fraser, Mr, the engineer: