A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature Part 52

WYNTOUN, ANDREW of (1350?-1420?).--Chronicler, was a canon of St.

Andrews, who became Prior of St. Serf's island in Loch Leven. His work, ent.i.tled _The Orygynale Cronykil_, begins with the creation of angels and men and comes down to 1406. It is poetic in form though rarely so in substance, and is of considerable historical value in its later parts and as regards the see of St. Andrews.

YALDEN, THOMAS (1670-1736).--Poet, _s._ of an exciseman at Oxf., and _ed._ at Magdalen Coll., entered the Church, in which he obtained various preferments. He was the author of a considerable number of poems, including a _Hymn to Darkness_, Pindaric Odes, and translations from the cla.s.sics.

YATES, EDMUND (1831-1894).--Novelist and dramatist, _b._ at Edin., held for some years an appointment in the General Post Office. He did much journalistic work, mainly as a dramatic writer, and wrote many dramatic pieces and some novels, including _Running the Gauntlet_ and _The Black Sheep_. He was perhaps best known as ed. of _The World_ society journal.

YONGE, CHARLOTTE MARY (1823-1901).--Novelist, only _dau._ of a landed gentleman of Hamps.h.i.+re, was _b._ near Winchester, and in her girlhood came under the influence of Keble, who was a near neighbour. She began writing in 1848, and _pub._ during her long life about 100 works, chiefly novels, interesting and well-written, with a High Church tendency. Among the best known are _The Heir of Redclyffe_, _Heartsease_, and _The Daisy Chain_. She also wrote _Cameos from English History_, and Lives of Bishop Patteson and Hannah More. The profits of her works were devoted to religious objects.

YOUNG, ARTHUR (1741-1820).--Writer on agriculture, was _b._ in London, the _s._ of a Suffolk clergyman. In his early years he farmed, making many experiments, which though they did not bring him financial success, gave him knowledge and experience, afterwards turned to useful account.

Various publications had made his name known, and in 1777 he became agent to Lord Kingsborough on his Irish estates. In 1780 he _pub._ his _Tour in Ireland_, and four years later started the _Annals of Agriculture_, 47 vols. of which appeared. His famous tours in France were made 1787-90, the results of his observations being _pub._ in _Travels in France_ (1792). He was in 1793 appointed sec. to the newly founded Board of Agriculture, and _pub._ many additional works on the subject. He is justly regarded as the father of modern agriculture, in which, as in all subjects affecting the public welfare, he maintained an active interest until his death. In his later years he was blind.

YOUNG, EDWARD (1683-1765).--Poet, _s._ of the Rector of Upham, Hamps.h.i.+re, where he was _b._ After being at Winchester School and Oxf. he accompanied the Duke of Wharton to Ireland. Y., who had always a keen eye towards preferment, and the cult of those who had the dispensing of it, began his poetical career in 1713 with _An Epistle to Lord Lansdowne_.

Equally characteristic was the publication in the same year of two poems, _The Last Day_ and _The Force of Religion_. The following year he produced an elegy _On the Death of Queen Anne_, which brought him into notice. Turning next to the drama he produced _Busiris_ in 1719, and _The Revenge_ in 1721. His next work was a collection of 7 satires, _The Love of Fame, the Universal Pa.s.sion_. In 1727 he entered the Church, and was appointed one of the Royal Chaplains, and Rector of Welwyn, Herts, in 1730. Next year he _m._ Lady Elizabeth Lee, the widowed _dau._ of the Earl of Lichfield, to whom, as well as to her _dau._ by her former marriage, he was warmly attached. Both _d._, and sad and lonely the poet began his masterpiece, _The Complaint, or Night Thoughts_ (1742-44), which had immediate and great popularity, and which still maintains its place as a cla.s.sic. In 1753 he brought out his last drama, _The Brothers_, and in 1761 he received his last piece of preferment, that of Clerk to the Closet to the Princess Dowager of Wales. Four years later, in 1765, he _d._ The poems of Y., though in style artificial and sometimes forced, abound in pa.s.sages of pa.s.sion and power which sometimes reach the sublime. But the feelings and sentiments which he expresses with so much force as a poet form an unpleasantly harsh contrast with the worldliness and tuft-hunting of his life.

APPENDIX OF LIVING WRITERS

_The number of writers included in this Appendix, and their bibliographies, are necessarily limited, but it is hoped that despite the difficulties of selection the list will be found fairly representative_.

ABBOTT, REV. EDWIN ABBOTT, D.D. (1838).--Writer on Biblical and literary subjects. _Shakespearian Grammar_ (1870), ed. of _Bacon's Essays_ (1876), _Bacon and Ess.e.x_ (1877), _Francis Bacon ... his Life and Works_ (1885), _Flatland, a Romance of Many Dimensions_ (1884), _St. Thomas of Canterbury_ (1898), _Paradosis_ (1904), _Johannine Vocabulary_ (1905), _Sila.n.u.s the Christian_ (1906), etc.

ALLEN, JAMES LANE (1849).--American novelist. _A Kentucky Cardinal_, _The Choir Invisible_, _A Summer in Arcady_, _Blue Gra.s.s Region of Kentucky_, _The Increasing Purpose_, _Aftermath_, part ii. of _A Kentucky Cardinal_, _The Mettle of the Pasture_, _The Reign of Law_.

ANSON, SIR WILLIAM REYNELL, BART., D.C.L. (1843).--Legaland const.i.tutional writer, etc., _Law and Custom of the Const.i.tution_, ed.

_Memoirs of the third Duke of Grafton_, etc.

ANSTEY, F., (_see_ GUTHRIE).

ARBER, EDWARD, D.Litt.--Literary antiquary. Has issued many reprints of rare books. _English Reprints_, _English Scholars' Library_, ed. _An English Garner_ (1880-83), _British Anthologies_ (1899-1901), _A Christian Library_ (1907).

ARCHER, WILLIAM (1856).--Writer on the drama and translator of Ibsen; ed.

Ibsen's _Prose Dramas_, 5 vols., _Collected Works of Ibsen_, 11 vols., translated with his brother, Major Chas. A., Ibsen's _Peer Gynt_, _Life of Macready_, _Masks or Faces_, _Study and Stage_, _Real Conversations_ (1904), etc.

ARNIM, COUNTESS VON (BEAUCHAMP).--_Elizabeth and her German Garden_, _A Solitary Summer_, _The April Baby's Book of Tunes_, _The Benefactress_, _Elizabeth's Adventures in Ruegen_, _Fraulein Schmidt and Mr.

Anstruther_.

ASHTON, JOHN (1834).--Literary antiquary, etc. _History of Chap-books of Eighteenth Century_ (1882), _Humour, Wit, and Satire of Seventeenth Century_ (ed. 1883), _Adventures and Discoveries of Capt. John Smith_ (1884), _Romances of Chivalry_ (1886), _Social England under the Regency_ (1890), etc.

AUSTIN, ALFRED (1835).--Poet Laureate 1896. _The Human Tragedy_, _Lyrical Poems_, _Narrative Poems_, _Fortunatus the Pessimist_, _Alfred the Great_, _Flodden Field: a Tragedy_ (1903), etc. Prose works include _The Garden that I Love_, _In Veronica's Garden_, _Lamia's Winter Quarters_, _Sacred and Profane Love_ (1908).

AVEBURY, JOHN LUBBOCK, 1ST LORD, P.C., D.C.L., etc.

(1834).--Miscellaneous writer. _Use of Life_, _Beauties of Nature_, _Pleasures of Life_ (two parts), _British Wild Flowers considered in relation to Insects, Ants, Bees, and Wasps_, _The Origin of Civilisation_, and many other works on Natural History, Sociology, and Economics.

BAGOT, RICHARD (1860).--Novelist. _A Roman Mystery_ (1899), _Casting of Nets_ (1901), _Donna Diana_ (1903), _Temptation_ (1907), etc.

BALFOUR, RIGHT HON. ARTHUR JAMES, P.C., LL.D., D.C.L., etc.

(1848).--Statesman and philosophic writer. _A Defence of Philosophic Doubt_ (1879), _Essays and Addresses_ (1893), _The Foundations of Belief_ (1895), _Reflections suggested by the New Theory of Matter_ (1904).

BALL, SIR ROBERT STAWELL, LL.D., F.R.S. (1840).--Scientific writer. _The Story of the Heavens_ (1885), _Starland_ (1889), _The Story of the Sun_ (1893), _The Earth's Beginning_ (1901), etc.

BARING-GOULD, SABINE (1834).--Novelist and folk-lorist, etc. _Iceland, its Scenes and Sagas_ (1862), _Curious Myths of the Middle Ages_ (1866), _Origin and Development of Religious Belief_ (1869-70), _Lives of the Saints_ (1872-77). Novels, _Mehalah_ (1880), _Richard Cable_ (1888), _The Pennycomequicks_ (1889), _Domitia_ (1898), _Pabo the Priest_ (1899), _Crock of Gold_ (1899), _Nebo the Nailer_ (1902), _Devons.h.i.+re Characters_ (1908), etc.; also books on Folk-lore.

BARRIE, JAMES MATTHEW, LL.D. (1860).--Novelist and dramatist. _Auld Licht Idylls_, _When a Man's Single_ (1888), _A Window in Thrums_ (1889), _My Lady Nicotine_ (1890), _The Little Minister_ (1891), _Sentimental Tommy_, _Margaret Ogilvy_ (1896), _The Little White Bird_ (1902), _Peter Pan_ (1906), etc. Dramatic works include _The Professor's Love Story_, _The Little Minister_, _The Wedding Guest_ (1900), _The Admirable Crichton_ (1903), _Peter Pan_ (1904), _What Every Woman Knows_ (1908).

BARRY, REV. WILLIAM (FRANCIS), D.D. (1849).--Novelist, etc. _The New Antigone_ (1887), _Two Standards_ (1898), _Arden Ma.s.siter_ (1900), _The Wizard's Knot_ (1901), _The Dayspring_ (1903), etc.

BATTERSBY, HARRY FRANCIS PREVOST ("FRANCIS PREVOST").--Poet, novelist, and war correspondent. Poems, _Melilot_ (1886), _Fires of Greenwood_ (1887). Novels, _Rust of Gold_ (1895), _The Avenging Hour_ (1896), _False Dawn_ (1897), _The Plague of the Heart_ (1902), etc.; joint translator of Tolstoi's _Christ's Christianity_ and _What to Do_. Plays, _The Way of War_ (1902), and _Voice of Duty_ (1904).

BAX, ERNEST BELFORT (1854).--Writer on philosophy and socialism. _Kant's Prolegomena with Biography and Introduction_ (1882), _Handbook to the History of Philosophy_ (1884), _Religion of Socialism_ (1886), _Ethics of Socialism_ (1889), _The Problem of Reality_ (1893), _Socialism, its Growth and Outcome_ (with W. Morris) (1894), _The Roots of Reality_ (1907), etc.

BEAZLEY, CHARLES RAYMOND, F.R.G.S. (1868).--Historical geographer, _James of Aragon_ (1870), _Henry the Navigator_ (1895), _Dawn of Modern Geography_, 3 vols. (1897-1906), etc.

BECKE, GEORGE LOUIS (1848).--Novelist. _By Reef and Palm_ (1890), _A First Fleet Family_ (1896), _Pacific Tales_ (1897), _Tom Wallis_ (1900), _Yorke, the Adventurer_ (1901), _c.h.i.n.kie's Flat_ (1903), etc.; and with W. Jeffery, _His Native Wife_ (1896), _The Mutineer_, _Admiral Phillip_ (1899), _The Tapu of Benderah_, etc.

BEECHING, REV. HENRY CHARLES, D.Litt. (1859).--Miscellaneous writer. _In a Garden and other Poems_ (1895), _Pages from a Private Diary_ (1898), various vols. of sermons, etc., including _Seven Sermons to Schoolboys_ (1894), _The Grace of Episcopacy_ (1906); has ed. _A Paradise of English Poetry_ (1892), _Lyra Sacra_ (1894), and various English cla.s.sics, etc.

BEERBOHM, MAX (1872).--Essayist and dramatic critic, _The Works of Max Beerbohm_, _The Happy Hypocrite_, _Caricatures of Twenty-five Gentlemen_, _More_ (1898), _Yet Again_ (1909), etc.