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he engaged at long ranges the united fleet which numbered 44 sail to his 34, and caused them to retreat to Cadiz. In January 1783 Howe succeeded Keppel as first lord of tho admiralty, an office which he resigned in the following April, but again accepted under the Pitt ministry, holding it till July 1788. In July 1787 he was made admiral of the white, and shortly afterwards was raised to an earl dom. In 1790 he was appointed to the command of a fleet intended to operate against the Spaniards, but peace was concluded before any action took place. On the com mencement of the war with France after the Revolution he obtained the chief command in the Channel, and on the 1st of June 1794 gained a great victory over the French fleet off Ushant, dismasting ten of the enemy’s ships and taking seven, one of which, the " Vengeur," sank as she was being towed away. On the 9th August of the same year he resumed the command of the Channel fleet, but in none of his cruises was he fortunate enough to meet any of the enemy’s vessels; and during the greater part of 1795 and 1796 ill health compelled him to remain on shore. In May 1797 he resigned his command. In the same year he was appointed with full powers to treat with the mutineers in the British fleet at Portsmouth and Spithead, and completely succeeded, through the confidence they had in the friendliness of his intentions, and by the firm and judicious measures he adopted, in eradicating the causes of discontent. During the latter years of his life Lord Howe suffered much from ill health; and he died under a violent attack of gout, August 5, 1799. A splendid monument was erected to Howe in St Paul’s Cathedral.

Lord Howe is entitled to the exceptional praise of never having failed to bear himself with credit and success in any of his enter prises. The qualities in which he excelled were coolness, firmness, sea manship, and caution an excess of the latter virtue, however, tending perhaps on some occasions to diminish the lustre and completeness of his victories. He introduced a new and thorough system of naval tactics, evolutions, and signals, and bestowed careful and minute attention on all the details of the service. In person he was tall and well-proportioned. His countenance was strongly marked, somewhat harsh in expression except when softened by his genial smile, and dark in complexion although the sobriquet of Black Dick by which he was known in the navy was not due to this circumstance, but to a mezzotinto portrait of himself which lumg in his cabin. The benevolent friendliness of his disposition secured him the strong affection and confidence as well as respect of his seamen, while no professional jealousy prevented him from doing full justice to the achievements of his officers.

HOWELL, James (1594–1666), a voluminous English author, best known by his collection of letters (Epistolce Hoelianae) and his Instructions for Forreine Travell, which, in Mr Arber’s phrase, form our first handbook for the Con tinent. Howell, as he was proud to acknowledge, was a Welshman; he was born probably at Abernant in Carmar thenshire, where his father was minister. From the free grammar school at Hereford he proceeded to Jesus College, Oxford, in 1610, and there he took his degree of B.A. in 1613. About 1617 we find him holding the post of steward in Sir Robert ManselPs glass-works in Broad Street, and in the following year he was commissioned to go abroad to procure the services of some high-class workmen. It was not till 1622 that he returned home, having visited Holland, France, Spain, and Italy; and these three or four years of foreign experience made a lasting impression on his character and his career. Not long after his return he was despatched to Spain in company with Lord Digby e embassy to try and settle a dispute about the unlawful seizure of an English vessel; but though he remained till the end of 1624 he was obliged to return without success: the Spaniards, irritated at the breaking off of the famous match, were in no mood for concessions. For some time Howell had no stable employment, but at length, in 1626, he went to York as secretary to Lord Scroop, lord president of the north, and for a season he appears to have been wonderfully fortunate. In 1627 he was elected M.P. for Richmond; in 1632 he was sent as orator with the embassy of the earl of Leicester to Denmark; and in 1642 the king appointed him one of the clerks of the privy council. On suspicion of royalist leanings he was committed to the Fleet prison by the Parliament in 1643, and, though he professed himself most humbly submissive to its authority, he was allowed to languish in confinement till 1648. He had acquired considerable fame by his allegorical AevSpoAoyt a, published in 1640, and his Instructions for Forreine Travel?, 1642; and now he was driven to maintain himself by his pen. He edited and supplemented Cotgrave’s French and English dictionary, compiled Lexicon Tetraglotton, or an English, French, Italian, and Spanish Dictionary (London, 1660), translated various works from Italian and Spanish, and wrote a life of Luuis XIII. In 1660 he presented a petition for confirmation in the place of clerk of the privy council; and, though this was not granted him, the post of historiographer royal was created for his benefit. In 1661 he made application for the office of tutor in foreign languages to the infanta Catherine of Braganza, and in the following year published an English Grammar translated into Spanish. He died in 1666, having realized to the last his favourite motto, " Senesco non segnesco." Howell had no small ability and learning; and all his writings are imbued with a certain simplicity and quaintness. His elaborate allegories, Discourses of Trees and the like, are now dead to the root; his linguistic labours, though of worth in their time, are a hundred times superseded; but his Letters (10th ed., 1737) are still almost models of their kind, and his Instructions, with their subtle observations and pithy parallels, are well worthy of their place in Mr Arber’s series (London, 1869).

HOWITT, William (1795–1879), a popular writer and poet, was born in 1795 at Heanor, Derbyshire, where the Howitts had long been settled. His mother and father being members of the Society of Friends, William was brought up, with his brothers, in the faith of that sect, and educated at the local schools of the society. What he thus learned was supplemented by studies in natural science and modern literature and languages; and his leisure, spent in the woods and by the brook, fostered that love of nature which brightened every page he wrote and won his readers sympathy. A poem, published in 1814, on the Influence of Nature and Poetry on National Spirit, was, so far as we know, his first printed work. He married in 1823 a Quaker lady, Mary Botham of Uttoxeter, who as poetess and prose-writer occupies a place in literature no less dis tinguished than her husband s. The first joint book appeared in the year of their marriage under the title, The Forest Minstrel, and other Poems. After a pedestrian excur sion to Scotland, they took up their residence at Nottingham, Howitt engaging in the business of an apothecary. In 1824 he printed A Poet’s Thoughts at the Interment of Lord Byron. We now find that both he and his wife had become known by their contributions, chiefly in rustic verse, to The Literary Souvenir, The Amulet, and other serial volumes of the day; these were collectively issued with additions in 1827 as The Desolation of Eyam (founded on the plague), The Emigrant, and other Poems. In 1831 Howitt produced a work of the class specially his own, The Book of the Seasons, or the Calendar of Nature, in which he drew a picture, from his own observations, of the appearances of mother earth in the garden, in the field, and by the stream during each of the twelve months. Of quite a different character was A Popular History of Priestcraft (1833), which ran through several editions, and gained him the favour of the active Liberals of his time, and the office of alderman of Notting ham. It was followed, in 1835, by a cognate work in 2 vols., entitled, Pantika, or Traditions of the most Ancient