Dictionary of English Literature 297
fit audience, and powerfully influenced a few select souls. He re signed his tutorship in 1880, partly because he found himself not entirely in his element, and partly because literature was becoming the predominant interest in his life. In 1885 he went to London, where he remained for 8 years, continuing, however, to reside at Brasenose during term. The reputation as a writer which he had gained made him welcome in whatever intellectual circles he found himself. Leaving London in 1893 he settled in a house in St. Giles, Oxf. In the spring of 1894 he went to Glasgow to receive the honor ary degree of LL.D., a distinction which he valued. In the summer he had an attack of rheumatic fever, followed by pleurisy. From these he had apparently recovered, but he succumbed to an attack of heart-failure which immediately supervened. Thus ended pre maturely in its 55th year a life as bare of outward events as it was rich in literary fruit and influence.
P. is one of the greatest modern masters of style, and one of the subtlest and most penetrating of critics. Though not a philosopher in the technical sense, he deeply pondered the subjects with which philosophy sets itself to deal; but art was the dominating influence in his intellectual life, and it was said of him that " he was a philo sopher who had gone to Italy by mistake instead of to Germany." He may also be called the prophet of the modern aesthetic school. His attitude to Christianity, though deeply sceptical, was not un sympathetic. As a boy he came under the influence of Keble, and at one time thought of taking orders, but his gradual change of view led him to relinquish the idea. Among his works may be mentioned an article on Coleridge, and others on Winckelmann, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Botticelli, etc., which were coll. and pub. as Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873); Appreciations (1889) contained his great essays on AEsthetic Poetry and Style, various Shakespearian studies and papers on Lamb and Sir T. Browne; Imaginary Portraits, and Greek Studies (1894); Plato and Platonism (1893). His masterpiece, however, is Marius the Epicurean (1885), a philosophical romance of the time of Marcus Aurelius. The style of P. is characterised by a subdued richness, and complicated, but perfect structure of sentences. In character he was gentle, refined, and retiring, with a remarkable suavity of manner and dislike of controversy.
PATMORE, COVENTRY KERSEY DIGHTON (1823-1896). Poet, s. of Peter George P., also an author, b. at Woodford, Essex, was in the printed book department of the British Museum. He pub. Tamerton Church Tower (1853), and between 1854 and 1862 the four poems which, combined, form his masterpiece, The Angel in the House, a poetic celebration of married love. In 1864 he entered the Chnrch of Rome. Thereafter he pub. The Unknown Eros (1877), Amelia (1878), and Rod, Root, and Flower (1895), meditations chiefly on religious subjects. His works are full of graceful and suggestive thought, but occasionally suffer from length and discur- siveness. He was successful in business matters, and in character was energetic, masterful, and combative. He numbered Tennyson and Ruskin among his friends, was associated with the pre- Raphaelites, and was a contributor to their organ, the Germ.
