part in trying to remove them. While Milner Gibson fought the battle in parliament, Francis did more than any man out of doors towards bringing about the repeal of the advertisement duty of 1s. 6d. on each advertisement, of the stamp duty of 1d. on each newspaper, and lastly of the paper duty of 1½d. per pound, which charges were successively repealed in 1853, 1855, and 1861. During the long agitation on this question he was constantly engaged in deputations to the leading ministers of the day, and was really the founder of the Association for the Repeal of the Paper Duty, on behalf of which he visited Edinburgh and Dublin in company with John Cassell [q. v.] and Henry Vizetelly. In 1863 his services were rewarded by the presentation, at 47 Paternoster Row, of a testimonial from gentlemen representing the press and the Association for the Repeal of the Taxes on Knowledge. ‘The Bookseller’ of 26 April 1861 (pp. 215–216) contains a paper by him on ‘The Progress of Periodical Literature from 1830 to 1860,’ and on 7 Jan. 1870 he contributed to the ‘Athenæum’ an essay on ‘The Literature of the People.’ He undertook the charge of the commercial affairs of ‘Notes and Queries’ in 1872, in addition to his other work, and in October 1881 he celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his becoming publisher of the ‘ Athenæum.’ For many years he resided at 2 Catherine Street and then at 20 Wellington Street, in connection with his publishing offices. Later on he lived at 11 Burghley Road, Highgate Road; but he returned in 1881 to 20 Wellington Street, Strand, London, where he died on 6 April 1882, and was buried in Highgate cemetery on 18 April, near the grave of Faraday, in the presence of many literary men. In his memory two John Francis pensions were founded in connection with the Newsvendors' Benevolent Institution. His wife, Charlotte Collins, died 7 Dec. 1879, aged 71.
Francis's elder son, John Collins Francis, succeeded him as publisher of the ‘Athenæum,’ and his younger son, Edward James Francis, was manager of the ‘Weekly Dispatch’ from 1875 till his death, 14 June 1881.
[J. C. Francis's John Francis, publisher of the Athenæum, 1888, i. 1–19, 45–7, 226, ii. 173 et seq., 545–50, with portrait; Times, 11 April 1882, p. 5, 12 April, p. 1, 19 April, p. 12; Athenæum, 15 April 1882, p. 476, and 27 Dec. 1884, p. 826; Sunday School Chronicle, 21 April 1882, p. 205; Grant's Newspaper Press (1871), ii. 299, 313, 320; Henry J. Nicoll's Great Movements, 1881, 269–339; Bookseller, 3 May 1882, and 5 March 1883 and 1885.]
FRANCIS, PHILIP (1708?–1773), miscellaneous writer, son of Dr. John Francis, rector of St. Mary's, Dublin (from which living he was for a time ejected for political reasons), and dean of Lismore, was born about 1708. He was sent to Trinity College, Dublin, taking the degree of B.A. in 1728, and was ordained, according to his father's wish, in the Irish branch of the English church. He held for some time the curacy of St. Peter's parish, Dublin, and while resident in that city published his translation of Horace, besides writing in the interests of ‘the Castle.’ Soon after the death of his wife, Elizabeth Rowe, whom he married in 1739, he crossed to England, and in 1744 obtained the rectory of Skeyton in Norfolk. If he ever took up his abode on this living he soon abandoned it for literature and society in London. In January 1752, when Gibbon became an inmate of his house, Francis was keeping or supposed to be keeping a school at Esher; but the boy's friends quickly found that the nominal instructor ‘preferred the pleasures of London to the instruction of his pupils,’ and in a month or two Gibbon was removed. To maintain himself in the social life of London, Francis tried many expedients, but most of them were failures. Twice was a play of his composition produced on the stage, and each time without success. He tried translation, but, except in his rendering of the works of Horace, he was beaten out of the field by abler writers. His fortune was made when he secured, through the kindness of Miss Bellamy, who pitied him for his ill-success in play-writing and recommended him to Fox, the post of private chaplain to Lady Caroline Fox, and became domesticated in her family, where he taught Lady Sarah Lennox to declaim and Charles James Fox to read. At the end of 1757 Fox was sent to Eton, and Francis accompanied him to assist the boy in his studies. The father, Henry Fox, best known as Lord Holland, found the Irish tutor a useful ally. It has sometimes been said that he was the chief writer in the paper called ‘The Con-test,’ which lived from November 1756 to August 1757, but the accuracy of this statement is more than doubtful. He is also said to have contributed to the ‘Gazette’ daily newspaper on behalf of the court interest. When Pitt resigned, in 1761, Francis wrote a libel against him under the title of ‘Mr. Pitt's Letter Versified,’ the notes to which, according to Horace Walpole, were supplied by Lord Holland, and he followed this with ‘A Letter from the Anonymous Author of “Mr. Pitt's Letter Versified,”’ in which he reflected on Pitt's indifference to the truculent language of Colonel Barré. Even so late as 1764 he
