Efigies poetica (1824), Life of Edmund Kean (1835), Essays and Tales in Prose (1851), Charles Lamb; a Memoir (1866), and of memoirs of Ben Jonson and Shakespeare for editions of their works. A posthumous autobiographical fragment with notes of his literary friends, of whom he had a wide range from Bowles to Browning, was published in 1877, with some additions by Coventry Patmore. Charles Lamb gave the highest possible praise to his friend's Dramatic Sketches when he said that had he found them as anonymous manuscript in the Garrick collection he would have had no hesitation about including them in his Dramatic Specimens. He was perhaps not an impartial critic. “Barry Cornwall's” genius cannot be said to have been entirely mimetic, but his works are full of subdued echoes. His songs have caught some notes from the Elizabethan and Cavalier lyrics, and blended them with others from the leading poets of his own time; and his dramatic fragments show a similar infusion of the early Victorian spirit into pre-Restoration forms and cadences. The results are somewhat heterogeneous, and lack the impress of a pervading and dominant personality to give them unity, but they a.bound in pleasant touches, with here and there the flash of a higher, though casual, inspiration.
His daughter, Adelaide Anne Proctor (1825–1864), also a poet, was born on the 30th of October 1825. She began to contribute to Household Words in 1853. She adopted the name of “Mary Berwick,” so that the editor, Charles Dickens, should not be prejudiced by his friendship for the Procters. Her principal work is Legends and Lyrics, of which a first series, published in 1858, ran through nine editions in seven years, while a second series issued in 1860 met with a similar success. Her unambitious verses dealing with simple emotional themes in a simple manner have a charm which is scarcely explicable on the ground of high literary merit, but which is due rather to the fact that they are the cultured expression of an earnest and beneficent life. Among the best known of her poems are The Angel’s Story, The Legend of Bregenz and The Legend of Provence. Many of her songs and hymns are very popular. Latterly she became a convert to Roman Catholicism, and her philanthropic zeal appears to have hastened her death, which took place on the 2nd of February 1864.
PROCTOR, ALEXANDER PHIMISTER (1862–), American sculptor and painter, was born in Ontario, Canada, on the 27th of September 1862. As a youth he lived at Denver, Colorado, spending much of his time in the Rocky Mountains, and his familiarity with the ways and habits of wild animals was supplemented later by study in the Jardin des Plantes, Paris. He was a pupil at the National Academy of Design and later in the Art
Students’ League, in New York, and first attracted attention by his statues of wild animals at the Columbian Exposition, Chicago. In 1896 he won the Rinehart Scholarship, which enabled him to spend five years in Paris, where he studied under Puech and I. A. Injalbert. Among his works of sculpture are:
“Indian Warrior” (a small bronze); “Panthers,” Prospect
Park, Brooklyn, New York; “Quadriga,” for United States
Pavilion, Paris Exhibition (1900), and groups-in the City Park,
Denver, and Zoological Park, New York. His pictures of wild
animals, mainly in water colours, are also characteristic. He
became a member of the Society of American Artists (1895),
of the National Academy of Design (1904), of the American
Water Color Society, and of the Architectural League, New
York.
PROCTOR, RICHARD ANTHONY (1837–1888), British astronomer, was born at Chelsea on the 23rd of March 1837. He was
a delicate child, and, his father dying in 1850, his mother attended
herself to his education. On his health improving he was sent
to King's College, London, from which he obtained a scholarship
at St John’s College, Cambridge. He graduated in 1860 as
23rd wrangler. His marriage while still an undergraduate
probably accounted for his low place in the tripos. He then
read for the bar, but turned to astronomy and authorship
instead, and in 1865 published an article on the “Colours of
Double Stars” in the Cornhill Magazine. His first book—Saturn
and his System—was published in the same year, at his
own expense. This work contains an elaborate account of the
phenomena presented by the planet; but although favourably
received by astronomers, it had no great sale. He intended to
follow it up with similar treatises on Mars, Jupiter, sun, moon,
comets and meteors, stars, and nebulae, and had in fact commenced
a monograph on Mars, when the failure of a New Zealand
bank deprived him of an independence which would have enabled
him to carry out his scheme without anxiety as to its commercial
success or failure. Being thus obliged to depend upon his
writings for the support of his family, and having learned by the
fate of his Saturn that the general public are not attracted by
works requiring arduous study, he cultivated a more popular
style. He wrote for a number of periodicals; and although
he has stated that he would at this time willingly have “ turned
to stone-breaking on the roads, or any other form of hard and
honest but unscientific labour, if a modest competence had been
offered” him in any such direction, he attained a high degree
of popularity, and his numerous works had a wide influence in
familiarizing the public with the main facts of astronomy. His
earlier efforts were, however, not always successful. His Handbook
of the Stars (1866) was refused by Messrs Longmans and
Messrs Macmillan, but being privately printed, it sold fairly
well. For his Half-Hours with the Telescope (1868), which
eventually reached a 20th edition, he received originally £25 from Messrs Hardwick. Although teaching was uncongenial to him he took pupils in mathematics, and held for a time the position of mathematical coach for Woolwich and Sandhurst.
His literary standing meantime improved, and he became a regular contributor to The Intellectual Observer, Chambers's Journal and the Popular Science Review. In 1870 appeared his Other Worlds than Ours, in which he discussed the question of the plurality of worlds in the light of new facts. This was followed by a long series of popular treatises in rapid succession, amongst the more important of which are Light Science for Leisure Hours and The Sun (1871); The Orbs around Us and Essays on Astronomy (1872); The Expanse of Heaven, The Moon and The Borderland of Science (1873); The Universe and the Coming Transits and Transits of Venus (1874); Our Place among Infinities (1875); Myths and Marvels of Astronomy (1877); The Universe of Stars (1878); Flowers of the Sky (1879); The Peotry of Astronomy (1880); Easy Star Lessons and Familiar Science Studies (1882); Mysteries of Time and Space and The Great Pyramid (1883); The Universe of Suns (1884); The Seasons (1885); Other Suns than Ours and Half-Hours with the Stars (1887). In 1881 he founded Knowledge, a popular weekly magazine of science (converted into a monthly in 1885), which had a considerable circulation. In it he wrote on a great variety of subjects, including chess and whist. He was also the author of the articles on astronomy in the American Cyclopaedia and the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and was well known as a popular lecturer on astronomy in England, America and Australia. Elected a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1866, he became honorary secretary in 1872, and contributed eighty-three separate papers to its Monthly Notices. Of these the more noteworthy dealt with the distribution of stars, star clusters and nebulae, and the construction of the sidereal universe. He was an expert in all that related to map-drawing, and published two star-atlases. A chart on an isographic projection, exhibiting all the stars contained in the Bonn Durchmusterung, was designed to show the laws according to which the stars down to the 9–10th magnitude are distributed over the northern heavens. His “Theoretical Considerations respecting the Corona” (Monthly Notices, xxxi. 184, 254) also deserve mention, as well as his discussions of the rotation of Mars, by which he deduced its period with a probable error of 0s·005. He also vigorously criticized the official arrangements for observing the transits of Venus of 1874 and 1882. His largest and most ambitious work, Old and New Astronomy, unfortunately left unfinished at his death, was completed by A. Cowper Ranyard and published in 1892. He settled in America some time after his second marriage in 1881, and died at New York on the 12th of September 1888.
