inserted some Greek verses in his Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste (1805, 8vo). Hallam was credited, in error, with having reviewed this in the Edinburgh, and consequently with being the author of certain severe remarks on one of the verses, "which he did not discover were Pindar's till the press rendered it impossible to cancel the critique, which still stands an everlasting monument of Hallam's ingenuity."[1]
On July 11th, of this year also, at his residence, Bolton Row, Mayfair, died W. R. Hamilton, F.R.S., aged 82.
On January 12th, 1860, died at Chichester, in the eighty-eighth year of his age, W. H. Brooke, an artist of great merit, belonging to a class which is probably now extinct. He studied under Samuel Drummond, A.R.A., who, in his etching from his own painting of "The Death of Nelson," has introduced a portrait of his pupil as one of the sailors. He was a friend of Singleton and Stothard, whom, in grace of composition and outline, he much resembled. He was "the faithful and cherished friend" of C. A. Stothard, and was held in the highest esteem by the more illustrious father, who considered that, as an artist, he possessed great genius, and regretted that he could not devote himself more entirely to the study of the higher branch of the art for which Nature had designed him.[2] It was Mr. Brooke to whom we are indebted for the charming vignettes in Major's first illustrated edition of The Complete Angler of Izaak Walton (1823, 8vo); for those for the first authorized edition of Moore's Irish Melodies, the Fairy Legends, of the South of Ireland, and the Fairy Mythology, of Keightley. In 1815 he was engaged on the Satirist, for which he produced some clever etchings; many of his drawings on wood, about this time, were engraved by Thomson, Branston, and other eminent xylographers. He illustrated the earlier editions of Carleton's Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry; The Siamese Twins, of Bulwer; and contributed several etchings to the Collectanea of his friend, Mr. Roach Smith, and the elegant Book of Archery of G. A. Hansard, 8vo, 1841.
On December 14th, 1860, at the age of 76, was gathered to his fathers the fourth Earl of Aberdeen, long the President of the "Society of Antiquaries." He is "the travelled Thane," the "sullen Aberdeen," of Byron, whose anger, as a poetic pilgrim, was awakened by what he considered the desecration of classic sites, by the removal of their monuments to a northern and uncongenial clime. This nobleman was a contributor, when very young, to the Edinburgh Review; wrote An Inquiry into the Principles of Beauty in Grecian Architecture (1822), which, I think, is appended, as an introduction, to Wilkins's translation of Vitruvius. As a Minister, the Earl of Aberdeen was not popular. His foreign policy was censured, as supposed, perhaps wrongly, to indicate a preference for absolute rather than constitutional government. His manner, moreover, was somewhat cold and austere; and he was supposed not to sympathize with the public mind in the war with Russia in the Crimea. Hence the clever lines, which appeared at this period, and of which I cite the first and last stanzas:—
"'There's cauld kail in Aberdeen,'
When blood runs quick in all besides;
The dilettante Scot serene,
- ↑ Note to English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. See also Hypocrisy: a Satire. By the Rev. C. C. Colton. Tiverton, 1812, 8vo, p. 22.
- ↑ See Life of Thomas Stothard, R.A., by Mrs. Bray, p. 205, note.
