New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.A., on 1 Jan. 1898.
Linton's fame as an engraver is widely spread, but he has never received justice as a poet. His more ambitious attempts, though often true poetry, are of less account than the little snatches of song which came to him in his later years, bewitching in their artless grace, and perhaps nearer than the work of any other modern poet to the words written for music in the days of Elizabeth and James. Produced at so late a period of life, these lyrics evince an indomitable vitality. They were dedicated to a coeval, William Bell Scott [q.v.], who wrote : 'All his later poems are on love, a fact that baffles me to understand.' His translations of French lyrics are masterly, and his anthologies prove his acquaintance with early and little-known English poetry. As a man he was amiable and helpful, full of kind actions and generous enthusiasms. His indifference to order and impatience of restraint, though trying to those most nearly connected with him, were not incompatible with exemplary industry in undertakings that interested him. His most serious defect, the 'carelessness of pecuniary obligation,' which he himself imputes to Leigh Hunt, mainly sprang from the sanguine temperament which so long preserved the freshness of the author and the vigour of the man.
Photographic portraits of Linton at advanced periods of life are prefixed to his 'Poems and Translations' (1889), and to his 'Memories,' 1895.
[Linton's Memories, 1895; G. S. Layard's Life of Mrs. Lynn Linton, 1901; Mr. A. H. Bullen in Miles's Poets of the Century; article on W. J. Linton by Mr. J. F. Kitto in English Illustrated Magazine, 1891; Times, 3 Jan. 1898; Athenæum, 8 and 15 Jan. 1898; personal knowledge.]
LLOYD, WILLIAM WATKISS (1818–1893), classical and Shakespearean scholar, the second son of David Lloyd of Newcastle-under-Lyme, was born at Homerton, Middlesex, 11 March 1813. He was educated at the grammar school of Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, and made so much progress that the master, the Rev. John Anderton, offered to contribute towards the fees of a university course. At the age of fifteen, however, he was placed in the counting-house of his cousins, Messrs. John and Francis Lloyd, the tobacco manufacturers of 77 Snow Hill, London, of which firm he afterwards became a partner; he retired from business in 1864. For a period of thirty-six years his days were devoted to uncongenial duties and his nights to books. At one time he lived at Snow Hill, and for many years never left London. With an inborn love for learning he added to a solid basis of Greek and Latin a wide knowledge of modern languages and literatures, as well as of ancient art, history, and archæology. To these pursuits every leisure hour, even to the close of his life, was applied. The firstfruit of his studies was an historical and mythological essay on the 'Xanthian Marbles: the Nereid Monument' (1845), followed by other contributions on subjects of Greek antiquities, some printed in the 'Classical Museum.' In 1854 he supplied certain 'Arguments' to Owen Jones's 'Apology for the Colouring of the Greek Court in the Crystal Palace.' In the same year he was elected a member of the Society of Dilettanti, chiefly through the friendly offices of Monckton Milnes (afterwards Lord Houghton). Until his death he 'was one of the principal guides and advisers of the Dilettanti in their archæological undertakings,' and acted temporarily as secretary and treasurer in 1888 and 1889 (Cust, History of the Soc. of Dilettanti, 1898, pp. 187, 206).
As a labour of love he supplied essays on the life and plays of Shakespeare to S. W. Singer's edition of the poet published in 1856 (2nd ed. 1875). The essays show acute criticism and thorough knowledge of Elizabethan literature, and were collected by the author in a private reprint (1858, and reissued without the life in 1875 and 1888). A memoir on the system of proportion employed in the design of ancient Greek temples was added by him to C. R. Cockerell's 'Temples of Jupiter Panhellenius at Ægina and of Apollo Epicurius,' published in 1860. The subject was also treated in 'A General Theory of Proportion in Architectural Design and its Exemplification in Detail in the Parthenon, with illustrative engravings (London, 1863, 4to; lecture delivered before the Royal Institute of British Architects, 13 June 1859), his most original work, of which the conclusions have since met with wide approval. His literary interests were now turned in a different direction, and he published 'The Moses of Michael Angelo : a Study of Art, History, and Legend' (1863, 8vo), followed by 'Christianity in the Cartoons, referred to Artistic Treatment and Historic Fact' (1865, 8vo), in which artistic criticism is coupled with a free treatment of religious matters, and 'Philosophy, Theology, and Poetry in the Age and Art of Rafael' (1866, large 8vo). In 1868 he married Ellen Brooker, second daughter of Lionel John Beale, and sister of Dr. Lionel S. Beale.
