Note (return) — Select Biography.

This Dial, which was really no common or vulgar invention, formerly stood in Privy Garden, Whitehall, at a short distance from Gibbons's noble brass statue of James II., which, as a waggish friend of ours said of the horse at Charing Cross, remains in statu-quo to this day. The Dial was invented by one Francis Hall, alias Line, a Jesuit, and Professor of Mathematics at Liege, in Germany. It was set up, as the old books have it, in the year 1669, by order of Charles II.; and in addition to the parts represented in the cut, the inventer intended to place a water-dial at each corner, which he had nearly completed when the original Dial for want of a cover, as he quaintly observes, (which according to his Majestie's Gracious Order should have been set over it in the Winter) was much injured by the snow lying frozen upon it. But there was no chance of obtaining this out of Charles's coffers, and the Dial soon became useless. Its explanation was, however, considered by many mathematical men of the period as too valuable to be lost, and the Professor accordingly printed the description at Liege, in 1673, in which were plates and diagrams of the several parts. The matter was too grave for pleasant, anecdotical Pennant, who, speaking of the Dial, in his London, says "the description surpasses my powers:" he refers the reader to the above work, a "very scarce book" in his time, and we have been at some pains to obtain the reprint, (London, 1685,) appended to Holwell's Clavis Horologiae; or Key to the whole art of Arithmetical Dialling, small 4to. 1712.3