of the Presidents of the
Royal Medical Society before his election to the chair of Midwifery in
1840; as an obstetrician his improvements and writings won him wide
repute, which became European on his discovery of chloroform in 1847; was
one of the Queen's physicians, and was created a baronet in 1866;
published "Obstetric Memoirs," "Archaeological Essays," &c. (1811-1870).

SIMROCK, KARL JOSEPH, German scholar and poet, born at Bonn; studied
at Bonn and Berlin, where he became imbued with a love for old German
literature, in connection with which he did his best-known work;
modernised the "Nibelungen Lied" (1827), and after his withdrawal from
the Prussian service gave himself to his favourite study, becoming
professor of Old German in 1850, and popularising and stimulating inquiry
into the old national writings by volumes of translations, collections of
folk-songs, stories, &c.; was also author of several volumes of original
poetry (1802-1876).

SIMS, GEORGE ROBERT, playwright and novelist, born in London; was
for a number of years on the staff of _Fun_ and a contributor to the
_Referee_ and _Weekly Dispatch_, making his mark by his humorous and
pathetic Dagonet ballads and stories; has been a busy writer of popular
plays (e. g. "The Lights o' London," "The Romany Rye") and novels (e. g.
"Rogues and Vagabonds," "Dramas of Life"); contributed noteworthy
letters to the Daily News on the condition of the London poor; _b_. 1847.

SIMSON, ROBERT, mathematician, born in Ayrshire; abandoned his
intention of entering the Church and devoted himself to the congenial
study of mathematics, of which he became professor in the old university
at Glasgow (1711), a position he held for 50 years; was the author of the
well-known "Elements of Euclid," but is most celebrated as the first
restorer of Euclid's lost treatise on "Porisms" (1687-1768).

SINAI, MOUNT, one of a range of three mountains on the peninsula
between the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Akaba, at the head of the Red
Sea, and from the summit or slopes of which Moses is said to have
received the Ten Commandments at the hands of Jehovah.

SINCERITY, in Carlyle's ethics the one test of all worth in a human
being, that he really with his whole soul means what he is saying and
doing, and is courageously ready to front time and eternity on the stake.

SINCLAIR, name of a Scottish family of Norman origin whose founder
obtained from David I. the grant of Roslin, n