MILMAN, HENRY HART (1791–1868), English historian and ecclesiastic, third son of Sir Francis Milman, Bart., physician to George III., was born in London on the 10th of November 1791. Educated at Eton and at Brasenose College, Oxford, his university career was brilliant. He gained the Newdigate prize with a poem on the Apollo Belvidere in 1812, was elected a fellow of Brasenose in 1814, and in 1816 won the English essay prize with his Comparative Estimate of Sculpture and Painting. In 1816 he was ordained, and two years later was presented to the living of St Mary’s, Reading. Milman had already made his appearance as a dramatic writer with his tragedy Fazio (produced on the stage under the title of The Italian Wife). He also wrote Samor, the Lord of The Bright City, the subject of which was taken from British legend, the “bright city” being Gloucester; but he failed to invest it with serious interest. In subsequent poetical works he was more successful, notably the Fall of Jerusalem (1820) and the Martyr of Antioch (1822). The influence of Byron is seen in his Belshazzar (1822). A tragedy, Anne Boleyn, followed in 1826; and Milman also wrote “When our heads are bowed with woe,” and other hymns; an admirable version of the Sanskrit episode of Nala and Damayanti; and translations of the Agamemnon of Aeschylus and the Bacchae of Euripides. In 1821 he was elected professor of poetry at Oxford, and in 1827 he delivered the Bampton lectures on the character and conduct of the apostles as an evidence of Christianity. His poetical works were published in three volumes in 1839.
Turning to another field, Milman published in 1829 his History of the Jews, which is memorable as the first by an English clergyman which treated the Jews as an Oriental tribe, recognized sheikhs and amirs in the Old Testament, sifted and classified documentary evidence, and evaded or minimized the miraculous. In consequence, the author was violently attacked and his inevitable preferment was delayed. In 1835, however, Sir Robert Peel made him rector of St Margaret’s, Westminster, and canon of Westminster, and in 1849 he became dean of St Paul’s. By this time his unpopularity had nearly died away, and generally revered and beloved, he occupied a dignified and enviable position, which he constantly employed for the promotion of culture and in particular' for the relaxation of subscription to ecclesiastical formularies. His History of Christianity to the Abolition of Paganism in the Roman Empire (1840) had been completely ignored; but widely different was the reception accorded to the continuation of his work, his great History of Latin Christianity (1855), which has passed through many editions. In 1838 he had edited Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and in the following year published his Life of Gibbon. Milman was also responsible for an edition of Horace, and when he died he had almost finished a history of St Paul’s Cathedral, which was completed and published by his son, A. Milman (London, 1868), who also collected and published in 1879 a volume of his essays and articles. Milman died on the 24th of September 1868, and was buried in St Paul’s Cathedral. By his wife, Mary Ann, a daughter of Lieut.-General William Cockell, he had four sons and two daughters. His nephew, Robert Milman (1816–1876), was bishop of Calcutta from 1867 until his death, and was the author of a Life of Torquato Tasso (1850).
See A. C. Tait, Sermon in Memory of H. H. Milman (London, 1868), and Arthur Milman, H. H. Milman (London, 1900). See also the Memoirs of R. Milman, bishop of Calcutta, by his sister, Frances Maria Milman (1879).
MILNE-EDWARDS, HENRY (1800–1885), French zoologist,
the son of an Englishman, was born in Bruges on the 23rd of
October 1800, but spent most of his life in France. At first he
turned his attention to medicine, in which he graduated at Paris in
1823; but his passion for natural history soon prevailed, and he
gave himself up to the study of the lower forms of animal life.
One of his earliest papers (Recherches anatomiques sur les crustacés),
which was presented to the Academy of Sciences in 1829,
formed the theme of an elaborate and eulogistic report by G.
Cuvier in the following year. It embodied the results of two
dredging expeditions undertaken by him and his friend J. V.
Audouin during 1826 and 1828 in the neighbourhood of Granville,
and was remarkable for clearly distinguishing the marine fauna
of that portion of the French coast into four zones. Much of
his original work was published in the Annales des sciences naturelles, with the editorship of which he was associated from
1834. Of his books may be mentioned the Histoire naturelle de crustacés (3 vols., 1837–1841), which long remained a standard
work; Histoire naturelle des coralliaires, published in 1858–1860,
but begun many years before; Leçons sur la physiologie et l’anatomie comparée de l’homme et des animaux (1857–1881), in
14 volumes; and a little work on the elements of zoology, originally
published in 1834, but subsequently remodelled, which
enjoyed an enormous circulation. He was appointed in 1841
professor of entomology at the muséum d’histoire naturelle,
where twenty-one years later he succeeded Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
in the chair of zoology. The Royal Society in 1856
awarded him the Copley medal in recognition of his zoological
investigations. He died in Paris on the 29th of July 1885.
His son, Alphonse Milne-Edwards (1835–1900), who became
professor of ornithology at the museum in 1876, devoted himself
especially to fossil birds and deep-sea exploration.
MILNER, ALFRED MILNER, Viscount (1854– ), British
statesman and colonial administrator, was born at Bonn on
the 23rd of March 1854, the only son of Charles Milner, M.D.,
whose wife was a daughter of Major-General Ready, sometime
governor of the Isle of Man. His paternal grandfather, an
Englishman, settled in Germany and married a German lady;
and their son, Charles Milner, practised as a physician in London
and became later Reader in English at Tübingen University.
Alfred Milner was educated first at Tübingen, then at King’s
College, London, and under Jowett as a scholar of Balliol
College, Oxford, from 1872 to 1876. He graduated in 1877,
with a first class in classics, having won the Hertford, Craven,
Eldon and Derby scholarships, and was elected to a fellowship
of New College. At Oxford he formed a close friendship with
Arnold Toynbee, and was associated with his schemes of social
work; and subsequently he wrote a tribute to his friend, Arnold Toynbee: a Reminiscence (1895). In 1881 he was called to the
bar at the Inner Temple and joined the staff of the Pall Mall Gazette under John Morley, becoming assistant editor under
W. T. Stead. In 1885 he abandoned journalism, and became
Liberal candidate for the Harrow division of Middlesex at the
general election, but was defeated. He acted as private secretary
to Mr (afterwards Lord) Goschen, and in 1887, when Goschen
became chancellor of the exchequer, was appointed his principal
private secretary. It was by Goschen’s influence that in 1889
he was made under-secretary of finance in Egypt. He remained
in Egypt four years, his period of office coinciding with the
first great reforms, after the danger of bankruptcy had been
avoided. Milner returned to England in 1892, and was appointed
chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue, being made C.B.
in 1894 and K.C.B. in 1895. Shortly after his return to
England he published his England in Egypt, which at once
became the authoritative account of the work done since the
British occupation.
Sir Alfred Milner remained at the Board of Inland Revenue until 1897. He was regarded as one of the clearest-headed and most judicious officials in the British service, and his position as a man of moderate Liberal views, who had been so closely associated with Goschen at the Treasury, Cromer in Egypt and Hicks-Beach (Lord St Aldwyn) and Sir W. Harcourt while at the Inland Revenue, marked him out as one in whom all parties might have confidence. The. moment for testing his capacity in the highest degree had now come. In April Lord Rosmead resigned his posts of high commissioner for South Africa and governor of Cape Colony. The situation resulting from the Jameson raid (see Transvaal and South Africa) was one of the greatest delicacy and difficulty, and Mr Chamberlain, now colonial secretary, selected Milner as Lord Rosmead’s successor. The choice was cordially approved by the leaders of the Liberal party, and warmly recognized at a farewell dinner presided over by Mr Asquith (March 28th, 1897). The
