Page:Cousins's Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature.djvu/370

 358 Dictionary of English Literature

The remaining years were clouded by financial troubles and ill- health. His last work was a play, The Conscious Lovers (1722). He left London and lived at Hereford and at Carmarthen, where he d. after a partial loss of his faculties from paralysis.

Lives by Austin Dobson (1886) and G. A. Aitken (1889). Ed., Plays by Aitken (1893), Essays (selected) Clarendon Press (1885), Tatter, Aitken (1898), Spectator, H. Morley (1868), Gregory Smith (1897-8), Aitken (1898).

STEEVENS, GEORGE (1736-1800). Shakespearian com mentator, ed. at Eton and Camb. He issued various reprints of quarto ed. of Shakespeare, and assisted Dr. Johnson in his ed., and also in his Lives of the Poets. In 1793 he himself brought out a new ed. of Shakespeare, in which he dealt somewhat freely with the text. He was in constant controversy with Ritson and other literary antiquaries, and was also an acute detector of literary forgeries, in cluding those of Chatterton and Ireland.

STEEVENS, GEORGE WARRINGTON (1869-1900). Jour nalist and miscellaneous writer, b. at Sydenham, and ed. at City of London School and Oxf., took to journalism, in which he distin guished himself by his clearness of vision and vivid style. Con nected successively with the National Observer, the Pall Mall Gazette, and the Daily Mail, he utilised the articles which appeared in these and other publications in various books, such as The Land of the Dollar (America) (1897), With Kitchener to Kartoum, and The Tragedy of Dreyfus. His most striking work, however, was Mono logues of the Dead (1895). He went as war correspondent to South Africa in 1900, and d. of enteric fever at Lady smith.

STEPHEN, SIR JAMES (1789-1859). Statesman and luV

torical writer, s. of James S., Master in Chancery, ed. at Camb., and called to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn 1811. After practising with success, accepted appointment of permanent counsel to Colonial Office and Board of Trade 1825, and was subsequently, 1826-47, permanent Under-Sec, for the Colonies, in which capacity he exer cised an immense influence on the colonial policy of the empire, and did much to bring about the abolition of the slave trade. Impaired health led to his resignation, when he was made K.C.B. and a Privy Councillor. He was afterwards Prof, of Modern History af| Camb. 1849-59, and of the same subject at the East India Coll. at Haileybury 1855-57. He wrote Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography (1849) and Lectures on the History of France (1852).

STEPHEN, SIR LESLIE (1832-1904). Biographer and

critic, s. of the above, was b. in London, and ed. at EtonJ King's Coll., London, and Camb., where he obtained a tutorial Fellowship, and took orders. He came under the influence of Millj Darwin, and H. Spencer, and devoted himself largely to the stud]! of economics. His religious views having undergone a change, he gave up the clerical character and his Fellowship, and became a pro4 nounced Agnostic. In 1865 he definitely adopted a literary career,' and contributed to the Saturday Review, Eraser's Magazine, and other periodicals. In 1873 he pub. a collection of his essays as Free\ Thinking and Plain Speaking, which he followed up with An\