Her younger sister, Rose Leclerq (1845?–1899), was born in Liverpool about 1845, and was on 28 Sept. 1861 at the Princess's the first Mrs. Waverley in 'Playing with Fire.' She was at Drury Lane the original Mary Vance in Mr. Burnand's 'Deal Boatman,' and played Astarte in 'Manfred' (10 Oct. 1863). At the Princess's (August 1868) she was Eliza in 'After Dark,' and at the Adelphi Kate Jessop in 'Lost at Sea.' She was Desdemona to the Othello of Phelps, was an admirable Mrs. Page, and was at Drury Lane the first Clara Ffolliott in the 'Shaughraun.' At the Vaudeville she was Sophia in an adaptation of 'Tom Jones,' at the Haymarket was Marie Lezinski in the 'Pompadour,' Lady Staunton in 'Captain Swift,' and Madame Fourcanard in 'Esther Sandray,' at the Garrick the Queen in 'La Tosca,' and at the Strand La Faneuse in the 'Illusion' of her brother Pierre. She was the original Evelina Foster in 'Beau Austin,' Lady Dawtry in the 'Dancing Girl,' Marchioness in the 'Amazons,' Lady Ringstead in 'The Princess and the Butterfly,' Mrs. Fretwell in 'Sowing the Wind,' and Lady Wargrave in the 'New Woman.' Her last original part was Mrs. Beechinor in Mr. H. A. Jones's 'Manœuvres of Jane,' produced at the Haymarket on 29 Oct. 1898. She played this character on 25 March 1899, and died on 2 April. Both the Leclercqs developed into good actresses. Rose Leclercq in her later days had a matchless delivery, and was the best, and almost the only, representative of the grand style in comedy. By her husband, Mr. Fuller, she was the mother of the actor, Mr. Fuller Mellish.
[Personal recollections; Pascoe's Dramatic List; Dramatic Peerage; Scott and Howard's Blanchard; Hollingshead's Gaiety Chronicles; Cook's Nights at the Play; Athenæum, Era, Sunday Times, and Era Almanack, various years.]
LE DESPENCER, Baron. [See Dashwood, Sir Francis, 1708–1781.]
LEE, HOLME, pseudonym. [See Parr, Harriet, 1828–1900.]
LEGGE, JAMES (1815–1897), professor of Chinese at the university of Oxford, son of Ebenezer Legge, was born at Huntly in Aberdeenshire in 1815. He was educated at the Aberdeen grammar school, and graduated M.A. at King's College, Aberdeen, in 1835. From his earliest years he had desired to enter the missionary field, and for the furtherance of this object he, at the completion of his course at Aberdeen, came to London and studied at the theological college at Highbury. In 1839 he was appointed by the London Missionary Society to the Chinese mission at Malacca, where he remained until the treaty of 1842 enabled him and others to begin missionary work in China. In 1840 he was appointed principal of the Anglo-Chinese College at Malacca, which Robert Morrison [q. v.] had founded in 1825, and in the following year the council of the university of New York conferred on him the degree of D.D. In 1843 he landed in the newly established colony of Hongkong, and took part in the negotiations which ended in the conversion of the Anglo-Chinese college into a theological seminary and its removal to Hongkong. There he resumed his position as principal. His health having broken down, he paid a visit to England in 1845, and three years later returned to Hongkong, where, in addition to his missionary work, he undertook the pastoral charge of an English congregation. In 1858 he paid another visit to England, and in 1873 he returned permanently to this country, resigning the principalship and other posts. In 1870 the degree of LL.D. was conferred on him by the university of Aberdeen, and in 1884 the same honour was granted him by the university of Edinburgh. In 1875 a number of merchants interested in China, and others, collected a fund for the endowment of a Chinese professorship at Oxford, on the understanding that Legge should be the first occupant of the chair. The university accepted the arrangement, appointed him professor, and the authorities of Corpus Christi College elected him a fellow of their college. His inaugural lecture was published in 1876. At Oxford he remained until his death. He died at his residence in Keble Road on 29 Nov. 1897. Legge was twice married: first, on 30 April 1839, to Mary Isabella, daughter of the Rev. John Morison; and secondly, in 1859, to Hannah Mary, daughter of John Johnstone, esq., of Hull, and widow of the Rev. G. W. Tilletts of Salisbury. By both wives he left children.
Legge was a voluminous writer both in Chinese and English, and did much to instruct his fellow-countrymen and continental scholars in the literature and religious beliefs of China. He bore a leading part in the controversy as to the best translation into Chinese of the term 'God,' and published a volume called 'The Notions of the Chinese concerning God and Spirits '(Hongkong and London, 1852, 8vo). But the great work of his life was the edition of the Chinese classics the Chinese text, with translation, notes, and preface. This task he began in 1841, and finished shortly before his death.
