The Late Professor Phillips (Professor of Geology)

The Late Professor Phillips.*

Fain would I to thy honour pay,

My e’er-to-be-remembered gifted friend;
For in thy greatness thou did condescend
To kindly notice me. O for a lay
Of nobler praise than I can sing or say 5
Of thy true worth such as Burns would have penn’d
If he had known thee. Minds like thine can bend
To humbler talents, and they show always
Respect unto the poorest who may strive
To find the truth and live it. Thus to me 10
Thou show’d the author’s kind sympathy,
By thy kind praise and aid, to keep alive
In me that love of knowledge which in thee
Shone with such light of heavenly brilliancy.

Rose Cottage, Stokesley George Markham Tweddell

* John Phillips, M.A., F.G.S., F.R.S., successively Professor of Geology in the
Universities of London, Dublin, and Oxford, and an able writer on the history and
geology of Yorkshire.
[Bards and Authors, stuck inside cover, Teesside Archives copy 2, U/TW/1/18]

More information here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Phillips_(geologist)

His book on Yorkshire geology - The Rivers and Mountains and Sea Coast of Yorkshire (with essays on the Climate, Scenery and Ancient Inhabitants of the County 1855 (PDF version here Free http://www.geology.19thcenturyscience.org/books/1855-Phillips-Yorkshire/htm/doci003.html