Holland's published writings consist mainly of collected sermons and articles. Since his death Canon Wilfrid J. Richmond has edited a volume, The Fourth Gospel (1923), containing fragments illustrating his philosophical position and certain essays introductory to a commentary upon the fourth gospel which he undertook in his later years. The sermons and addresses are all written in a strongly individual and somewhat exuberant style. But the thought is neither obscure nor loose: the exuberance almost always results from the rapidity with which different aspects of his subject come before his mind: it is an exuberance of thought, and not merely of words. All his utterances, whether upon the mysteries of the Faith, the experiences of Christian life, or social rights and wrongs, are marked by a passionate sincerity and enthusiasm.
Owing to the constant disturbance of illness, Holland was not deeply read in all the controversial literature surrounding the subjects which he studied: his letters show how fully conscious he was of this. But in all his dealing with books or opinions he had an unusual power of penetrating to the mind of the man behind them. This was the most striking feature of his lectures at Christ Church on Plato's Republic, and is conspicuous in the notes above mentioned for the introduction to St. John's gospel. It is, perhaps, connected with this characteristic, that he was specially interested in studying, when possible, the portraits of authors. It was his power of penetrating minds other than his own that accounted for his attitude in theology and in politics. In both he must have departed widely from the lines on which he had been brought up. His early Oxford friendships, and his interest not merely in social and other questions but in the people who were raising them, made it inevitable that he should combine in his own mind and action lines of thought that to others often seemed incompatible. He was a strong and convinced liberal in politics and in theology—as his scheme for divinity degrees plainly showed in 1913—and at the same time a high churchman with a great delight in expressive ritual, a pride in the long history of the Church, and an extraordinarily penetrating perception of doctrinal truth and spiritual reality. But his interest in men did not blind him to bad work or bad arguments: at times—like Bishop Westcott—he was almost cynically clear-sighted and relentless. His written work unfortunately gives but a broken picture of his power and influence both in thought and action.
[Stephen Paget, Henry Scott Holland, Memoir and Letters, 1921 (portrait); personal knowledge. See also E. Lyttelton, The Mind and Character of Henry Scott Holland, 1926.]
HOLLAND, Sir HENRY THURSTAN, first Viscount Knutsford (1825–1914), belonged by descent to the family of Holland, derived, through the Hollands of Clifton and Mobberley, from the Hollands of Upholland. His ancestors owned various estates for many centuries in Lancashire and Cheshire. He was the elder son of Sir Henry Holland, first baronet [q.v.], a leading London physician, by his first wife, Margaret Emma, daughter of James Caldwell, of Linley Wood, Staffordshire, and was born at his father's house, 72 Brook Street, London, 3 August 1825. He was educated at Harrow, at Durham University, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took his degree in 1847. At Durham he won the Durham prize for Latin verse, and he steered the Cambridge boat in the university four-oared race of 1846. He was called to the bar by the Inner Temple in 1849, and practised on the Northern circuit. In 1850 he acted as secretary to the royal commission on common law, and assisted in drafting the Common Law Procedure Acts of 1852 and 1854. He was offered by Lord Campbell the county-court judgeship of Northumberland, but declined. In 1867 he was appointed by the fourth Earl of Carnarvon to be legal adviser at the Colonial Office, and gave up private practice. In 1870 he became assistant under-secretary for the Colonies. He held this office until August 1874, and then, having in 1873 succeeded to the baronetcy, resigned it in order to stand for parliament as conservative candidate for Midhurst. He was elected without a contest, and held the seat until 1885, when, under the Redistribution Act, Midhurst ceased to exist as a constituency. Sir Henry then stood for the newly created constituency of Hampstead, where he defeated the Marquess of Lorne. In the same year he became financial secretary to the Treasury in Lord Salisbury's administration, and soon afterwards vice-president of the Committee of Council on Education. He held the same office again in Lord Salisbury's second administration (1886–1888), and at the beginning of the latter year became secretary of state for the Colonies, and so head of the department in which he had served
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