Part 129 (1/2)
CLARENDON, EDWARD HYDE, Earl of, sat in the Short Parliament and the Long on the popular side, but during the Civil War became a devoted Royalist; was from 1641 one of the chief advisers of the king; on the failure of the royal cause, took refuge first in Jersey, and then in Holland with the Prince of Wales; contributed to the Restoration; came back with Charles, and became Lord Chancellor; fell into disfavour, and quitted England in 1667; died at Rouen; wrote, among other works, a ”History of the Great Rebellion,” dignifiedly written, though often carelessly, but full of graphic touches and characterisations especially of contemporaries; it has been called an ”epical composition,” as showing a sense of the central story and its unfolding. ”Few historians,” adds Prof. Saintsbury, ”can describe a given event with more vividness. Not one in all the long list of the great pract.i.tioners of the art has such skill in the personal character” (1608-1674).
CLARENDON, GEORGE VILLIERS, EARL OF, a Whig statesman; served as a cabinet minister under Lord Melbourne, Lord John Russell twice, Lord Aberdeen, Lord Palmerston, and Mr. Gladstone; held the office of Foreign Secretary under the three preceding; was Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland at the time of the potato failure, and represented Britain at the Congress of Paris; died in harness, deeply lamented both at home and abroad (1800-1870).
CLAReTIE, JULES, a French journalist, novelist, dramatic author, and critic, born at Limoges; has published some 40 volumes of _causeries_, history, and fiction; appointed Director of the Theatre Francais in 1893; _b_. 1840.
CLARISSA HARLOWE, the heroine of one of Richardson's novels, exhibiting a female character which, as described by him, is p.r.o.nounced to be ”one of the brightest triumphs in the whole range of imaginative literature,” is described by Stopford Brooke ”as the pure and ideal star of womanhood.”
CLARK, SIR ANDREW, an eminent London physician, born near Cargill, in Perths.h.i.+re, much beloved, and skilful in the treatment of diseases affecting the respiratory and digestive organs (1826-1893).
CLARK, SIR JAMES, physician to the Queen, born in Cullen; an authority on the influence of climate on chronic and pulmonary disease (1788-1870).
CLARK, THOMAS, chemist, born in Ayr; discovered the phosphate of soda, and the process of softening hard water (1801-1867).
CLARKE, ADAM, a Wesleyan divine, of Irish birth; a man of considerable scholars.h.i.+p, best known by his ”Commentary” on the Bible; author also of a ”Bibliographical Dictionary” (1762-1832).
CLARKE, CHARLES COWDEN, a friend of Lamb, Keats, and Leigh Hunt; celebrated for his Shakespearian learning; brought out an annotated Shakespeare, a.s.sisted by his wife; lectured on Shakespeare characters (1787-1877).
CLARKE, DR. SAMUEL, an English divine, scholar and disciple of Newton, born at Norwich; author, as Boyle lecturer, of a famous ”Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of G.o.d,” as also independently of ”The Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion”; as a theologian he inclined to Arianism, and his doctrine of morality was that it was congruity with the ”eternal fitness of things” (1675-1729).
CLARKE, EDWARD DANIEL, a celebrated English traveller, born in Suss.e.x; visited Scandinavia, Russia, Circa.s.sia, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Greece; brought home 100 MSS. to enrich the library of Cambridge, the colossal statue of the Eleusinian Ceres, and the sarcophagus of Alexander, now in the British Museum; his ”Travels” were published in six volumes (1769-1822).
CLARKE, HENRI, Duc de Feltre, of Irish origin, French marshal, and minister of war under Napoleon; inst.i.tuted the prevotal court, a _pro re nata_ court without appeal (1767-1818).
CLARKE, MARY COWDEN, _nee_ Novello, of Italian descent, wife of Charles Cowden, a.s.sisted her husband in his Shakespeare studies, and produced amid other works ”Concordance to Shakespeare,” a work which occupied her 16 years (1809-1898).
CLARKE, WILLIAM GEORGE, English man of letters; Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; edited the ”Cambridge Shakespeare,” along with Mr.
Aldis Wright (1821-1867).
CLARKSON, THOMAS, philanthropist, born in Wisbeach, Cambridges.h.i.+re; the great English anti-slavery advocate, and who lived to see in 1833 the final abolition in the British empire of the slavery he denounced, in which achievement he was a.s.sisted by the powerful advocacy in Parliament of Wilberforce (1760-1846).
CLa.s.sIC RACES, the English horse-races at Newmarket--Derby, the Oaks, and the St. Leger.
CLa.s.sICS, originally, and often still, the standard authors in the literature of Greece or Rome, now authors in any literature that represent it at its best, when, as Goethe has it, it is ”vigorous, fresh, joyous, and healthy,” as in the ”Nibelungen,” no less than in the ”Iliad.”