The New International Encyclopædia/Grosart, Alexander Balloch

GRO'SART, Alexander Balloch (1827-99). An English literary antiquary, born at Stirling, Scotland. Ordained as minister in the United Presbyterian Church in 1856, he settled as pastor of Saint George's Church, Blackburn, Lancashire, in 1868. 0wing to ill health, he resigned in 1892, and passed his last years in Dublin. He wrote hymns and religious works, but is known chiefly for his editions of Elizabethan and post-Elizabethan writers, Spenser, Sidney, Nash, Greene, Barnfield, Donne, Giles Fletcher, Vaughan, Herbert, Herrick, and others, published in the Fuller Worthies' Library, the Chertsey Library, the Huth Library, and elsewhere. Grosart performed a valuable service in collecting a mass of literary material, which needs sifting by more exact scholars.