George Lewis Scott was an English royal tutor, encyclopedist, and dilettante.
Background
Born at Hanover in May 1708, he was the eldest son of George Scott of Bristo in Scotland, and Marion Stewart, daughter of Sir James Stewart of Coltness, Lord Advocate of Scotland. At the end of 1726, after his father"s death, his mother moved to Leyden for the education of her children.
Career
George Scott held diplomatic posts at various German courts, and was envoy-extraordinary to Augustus II the Strong, king of Poland, in 1712. George Lewis was called to the bar at the Middle Temple, became Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries on 3 June 1736, and Fellow of the Royal Society on 5 May 1737. And was a member in 1736 of the Society for Encouragement of Learning.
Scott was considered a Jacobite, and his appointment caused a stir.
By July 1752 the tutors were divided into factions, and the quarrel lasted all year. In February 1758 Scott was made a commissioner of excise, and he held that post until his death.
Scott died on 7 December 1780. Edward Montagu (1692–1776), of Sandleford, was a brother-in-law.
Scott was a pupil of Abraham De Moivre, and was known for his knowledge of mathematics.
On 7 May 1762 he sent a long letter to Edward Gibbon on the mathematical books he should study. Gibbon, on 19 October 1767, asked him to supply a paper ‘on the present state of the physical and mathematical sciences’ in England, for insertion in the Mémoires Littéraires de la Grande-Bretagne of Jacques Georges Deyverdun and himself. In December 1775 Gibbon sent Scott a part of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Scott"s letters to Robert Simson, with those he received in reply, are printed in William Trail"s of Simson.
Charles Burney speaks of him as an excellent musician, and as performing on the harpsichord. Fanny Burney, who met Scott in 1769, described him as ‘very sociable and facetious.
He entertained me extremely with droll anecdotes and stories among the Great and about the Court.’ George Rose knew him ‘long and very intimately,’ and praised him as ‘amiable, honorable, temperate, and one of the sweetest dispositions I ever knew.’ And it was Scott who introduced Thomas Paine to Benjamin Franklin, an act of networking with profound results for the history of revolutionary America and Europe. He was tall and big. Samuel Johnson was one day giving way to tears, when Scott, who was present, clapped him on the back and said, ‘What"s all this, my dear sir? Why, you and I and Hercules, you know, were all troubled with melancholy.’ The doctor was ‘so delighted at his odd sally that he suddenly embraced him’.