was afterwards divided into three branches, at Glasgow, Edinburgh, and St. Andrews respectively. He was also keenly interested in politics. In his youth his foreign politics had been coloured by his father's intimacy with Kossuth and Mazzini, both of whom he afterwards came to know personally. As an Oxford undergraduate he had warmly sympathised with the north in the great American civil war. In course of time his political sentiments took a pronouncedly conservative hue; but in matters ecclesiastical he always remained a consistent liberal. He was warmly interested in educational politics, and addresses delivered by him on national education (Glasgow, 1869), and on university reform (Glasgow, 1888), attested the vigour of his public utterances.
In the autumn of 1865 Nichol paid a visit to the United States, where he made the personal acquaintance of Emerson and Longfellow. In later years he was a frequent visitor to the continent, while other long vacations were devoted to literary work in Scottish country retreats. On resigning his chair at Glasgow in 1889, he spent much time abroad; but in the autumn of 1890 he settled definitively in London, ultimately in Kensington. In November 1891 he revisited Glasgow, on the occasion of the presentation of his portrait by Mr. Orchardson, R.A., and delivered a characteristic address to the subscribers, mostly members of the university. In London, while his pen remained active, he occasionally lectured in public. The death of his wife in January 1894 broke the mainspring of his powers, and he died on 11 Oct. of the same year. He was cremated four days afterwards at Woking, his ashes being taken to St. George's cemetery, Edinburgh, where she had been laid to rest.
From 1853 onwards Nichol and his sister Agnes (afterwards the wife of Professor William Jack) had found a second mother in his father's second wife, Elizabeth Pease, at whose house in Edinburgh (Huntley Lodge) he was in his later years a frequent visitor. On 10 April 1861 he married Jane Stewart, eldest daughter of Henry Glassford Bell [q. v.], afterwards sheriff of Lanarkshire. The union, of which were born a son and two daughters, was one of perfect happiness.
From first to last Nichol's chief ambition was a literary eminence which he never realised, and, owing to a constitutional nervousness rather than to vanity, he nursed the delusion that his literary claims were belittled by a critical clique. But if as a poet he missed fame, he vindicated his right to a high place among writers of spirited, sincere, and thoughtful verse. His historical drama, 'Hannibal' (Glasgow, 1873), remained his most notable original effort in poetry. 'The Death of Themistocles and other Poems' (Glasgow, 1881) added a fine dramatic fragment of a cognate kind, with which was printed a selection of lyrics full of fire and intensity. If, as Jowett said, Nichol'sprose style 'bristled too much,' it was often tipped with fire. As a critic he was distinguished by independence of judgment founded on philosophic thought, and by perfect fearlessness of sympathy. His chief critical works were his 'Byron' in the 'English Men of Letters' series (1880), which went some way towards converting Mr. Swinburne from his unduly deprecatory opinion of that poet; his 'Robert Burns : a Summary of his Career and Genius' (Edinburgh, 1882), which was designed as an introduction to Paterson's library edition, and proved one of the most finished in form as well as concentrated in treatment of all Nichol's prose productions; his 'Francis Bacon' (2 vols., Life and Philosophy, in 'Blackwood's Philosophical Classics for English Readers,' 1888-9); and 'Carlyle,' the fruit of a life's intellectual and moral sympathy ('English Men of Letters' series, 1892). Besides an admirable historical review of 'American Literature' for the 'Encyclopædia Britannica,' 1882 (reprinted in a revised and enlarged edition, 1885), Nichol contributed to T. H. Ward's 'English Poets' (from 1880), and to many reviews and journals. He endeavoured to meet some of the requirements of his teaching of literature by his 'Tables of European Literature' (Glasgow, 1876, and later editions, that of 1888 including 'America') and 'Tables of Ancient Literature' (Glasgow, 1877), as well as by his 'Primer of English Composition' (1879), and his 'Questions and Answers' on the same (1890).
[Of Nichol's earlier years (1833-51) he in 1861 wrote for the eye of his wife a series of picturesque reminiscences under the title of Leaves from my Life. These are printed in the full Memoir of John Nichol, by Professor Knight, Glasgow, 1896. See also obituary notices by E. C. (Edward Caird) in Glasgow Herald; by J. S. C. (J. S. Cotton) in Academy, and T. W. (Theodore Watts-Dunton) in Athenæum; and A. M. Stoddart, Elizabeth Pease Nichol (1899). This article is also based on private information and personal knowledge.]
NICHOLSON, HENRY ALLEYNE (1844–1899), biologist, born at Penrith, Cumberland, on 11 Sept. 1844, was son of John Nicholson, a distinguished biblical scholar, and himself the son of the Rev. Mark Nicholson, sometime president of Codrington
