Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/463

 secretary to Sir Alexander Cockburn at Geneva in the Alabama arbitration, and suffered in health from the pressure of work.

In January 1873 he was promoted to be third secretary, and transferred to the legation at Lisbon under Sir Charles Murray on 10 Feb. He was unemployed from 1 Jan. to 8 Sept. 1875, when he resigned on account of illness. He had been an accomplished skater and dancer, but nervous disease developed, with the result that for twenty years he was incapacitated from all physical exert ion and had to lie on his back. He lived at Florence with his mother and his half-sister, Miss Violet Paget ('Vernon Lee'), spending the summers at Siena or the Bagni di Lucca. His intellectual vitality was uninjured by his physical disablement. His health was soon sufficiently restored to enable him to indulge his gifts as a talker, and his room became one of the centres of intellectual cosmopolitan society in Florence. His visitors included Mr. Henry James and M. Paul Bourget.

In time, too, he was able to compose and to dictate fragments of verse. Most of 'The Sonnets of the Wingless Hours' (published in 1894), his most characteristic production, were written between 1880 and 1888. By 1896 his recovery was completed. From a visit to Canada and the United States in 1897 he returned a 'new man,' and he married on 21 July 1898, at Boldxe, Hampshire, Annie E. Holdsworth, the novelist. They settled in a villa between Florence and Fiesole. A volmne of verse, entitled 'Forest Notes,' in which both husband and wife collaborated, appeared in 1899. In 1900 they moved to the Villa Benedettini, San Gervasio, where in 1903 a daughter, Persis Margaret, was born. The child died in 1904, and the father's grief is recorded in 'Mimma Bella' (published in 1909), a volume of elegiac sonnets. The depression culminated in a paralytic stroke, from which Lee-Hamilton died on 7 Sept. 1907, at the Villa Pierotti, Bagni di Lucca; he was buried in the new protestant cemetery outside the Porta Romana, Florence. A portrait painted during his last illness by Stephen Haweis and a beautiful death mask are in the possession of his widow. Poetry was Lee-Hamilton's consolation throughout his long illness. His earliest volume, 'Poems and Transcripts,' appeared in 1878; then followed 'Gods, Saints, and Men' (1880), 'The New Medusa and other Poems' (1882), 'Apollo and Marsyas and other Poems' (1884). He excelled in the poetic form of the sonnet, of the technique of which he had a perfect mastery, and the dramatic impersonal 'Imaginary Sonnets' (1888) and the autobiographic 'Sonnets of the Wingless Hours' (1894) rank with the best of their kind.

Lee-Hamilton wrote also 'The Fountain' of Youth,' a fantastic tragedy in verse (1891); two novels, 'The Lord of the Dark Red Star, being the Story of the Supernational Influences in the Life of an Italian Despot of the 13th Century' (1903), and 'The Romance of the Fountain' (1905); and a metrical translation of Dante's 'Inferno' (1898). In 1903 he made a selection from his poems for the 'Canterbury Poets' series, for which William Sharp wrote a preface.

 LEFROY, WILLIAM (1836–1909), dean of Norwich, born in Dublin on 6 Nov. 1836, was eldest of the four children of Isaac and Isabella Lefroy, whose circumstances were humble. Educated at St. Michael-le-Pole Latin school, Dublin, he entered a printing office in youth, afterwards working as a journalist on the 'Irish Times.' With the help of an ex-scholar, John Galvan, he prepared himself for Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated B.A. in 1863, proceeding B.D. in 1867 and D.D. in 1889. Ordained deacon in 1864, and priest in 1865 by the bishop of Cork, John Gregg [q. v.], he was licensed to the curacy of Christ Church, Cork. The fame of his preaching power quickly spread, and in 1866, when he was thirty, he was appointed incumbent of St. Andrew's chapel, Renshaw Street, Liverpool, in succession to Robert William Forrest, afterwards Dean of Worcester. Originally a broad churchman, he was influenced by the evangelical preaching of D. L. Moody, of Northfield. U.S.A. The first bishop of Liverpool, J. C. Ryle [q. v. Suppl. I], made him honorary canon in 1880, rural dean of South Liverpool in 1884, and archdeacon of Warrington in 1887. He was elected a proctor in convocation in 1886, and was appointed Donnellan lecturer at Dublin in 1887. He exerted much influence over the young men of his congregation, many of whom took holy orders. He was a prominent member of the Liverpool school board in the 'voluntary' interest from 1876.

At Easter 1889 he succeeded Edward Meyrick Goulburn [q. v. Suppl. I] in the deanery of Norwich, after the jwst had been declined by James Fleming [q. v. Suppl. II]. He soon effected some reforms in the 