'William Shakespeare, Pedagogue and Poacher' (1904); and finally 'De flagello myrteo' (1905; new edit. 1906), a collection (in prose form but of poetic temper) of three hundred and sixty rather subtle 'thoughts and fancies on love.' Garnett's verse displays a cultured, even fastidious, taste and much metrical facility, but much of it is a graceful and melodious echo of wide reading rather than original imaginative effort. The thought at times strikes a cynical note. Probably his most valuable poetic work was done in translation.
In prose Garnett's labours were extensive and unusually versatile. He was from early manhood a voluminous contributor to periodicals. At the outset he wrote for the 'Literary Gazette' when owned by Lovell Reeve, and for the 'Examiner.' Subsequently he regularly wrote on German literature for the 'Saturday Review.' Articles from his pen appeared from time to time in 'Macmillan's Magazine,' in 'Temple Bar,' and 'Fraser's Magazine.' At a later period he wrote critical introductions to innumerable popular reprints of standard books, and he diversified literary criticisms with many excursions into biography. In the 'Great Writers' series he published monographs on 'Milton' (1887), on 'Carlyle,' which was drastically reduced before publication (1887), and on 'Emerson' (1888). To this Dictionary and to the 'Encyclopædia Britannica' he supplied very many memoirs. He had no great powers of research and was prone to rely for his facts on his retentive memory, but his biographical work was invariably that of a tasteful, discriminating, and well-informed compiler. His range of biographical interest extended far beyond men of letters, and his biographies include those of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, the colonial pioneer (1898), and of William Johnson Fox, the social reformer (published posthumously and completed by Garnett's son Edward in 1910).
Garnett's most important publications were the volumes entitled 'Relics of Shelley' (1862) and 'The Twilight of the Gods' (1903). The former was a small collection of unpublished verse by the poet, which Garnett discovered among the poet's MSS. and notebooks, which had belonged to Shelley's widow, and passed on her death in 1851 to his son. Sir Percy Shelley. With Shelley he had many affinities. His good fortune in discovering the poet's unknown work gave great satisfaction to Sir Percy and to his wife, Lady Shelley. Garnett became their intimate friend, and they attested their regard for him by presenting him with Shelley's notebooka. These fetched 3000l. at the sale of Garnett's library after his death. Lady Shelley pressed on Garnett the task of preparing the full life of her father-in-law, but other engagements compelled him to yield the labour to Prof. Edward Dowden. Garnett's 'The Twilight of the Gods' is a series of semi-classical or oriental apologues of pleasantly cynical flavour in the vein of Lucian. The book came out in 1888, and attracted no attention, though the earl of Lytton, then English ambassador at Paris, promptly recognised in a long letter to the author the fascination of its imaginative power and dry humour. A reprint in 1903 was welcomed by a large audience and established Garnett's reputation as a resourceful worker in fiction and a shrewd observer of human nature.
Among Garnett's later works were a useful 'History of Italian Literature' (1897), and he joined Mr. Edmund Gosse in compiling an 'Illustrated Record of English Literature' (in 4 vols.); vols. i. and ii. were from Garnett's pen (1903).
Garnett cherished a genuine and somewhat mystical sense of religion which combined hostility to priestcraft and dogma with a modified belief in astrology. He explained his position in an article in the 'University Magazine' (1880), published under the pseudonym of A. G. Trent, which was re-issued independently in 1893 as 'The Soul and the Stars'; it was translated into German in 1894. Garnett maintained that astrology was 'a physical science just as much as geology,' but he gave no credit to its alleged potency as a fortune-telling agent.
In 1883 the University of Edinburgh conferred on Garnett the honorary degree of LL.D., and he was made C.B. in 1895. He died at his house, 27 Tanza Road, Hampstead, on 13 April 1906, and was buried in Highgate cemetery. The chief part of his library was sold at Sotheby's on 6 Dec. 1906.
Garnett married in 1863 Olivia Namey (d. 1903), daughter of Edward Singleton, co. Clare, and had issue three sons and three daughters. His second son, Edward (b. 1868), is well known as an author and dramatist.
On his retiring from the museum in 1899 Garnett's friends presented him with his portrait by the Hon. John Collier. The portrait belongs to Garnett's eldest son, Robert. A photogravure of it is prefixed to 'Three Hundred Notable Books' (1899). A better painting by Miss E. M. Heath is
