Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/602

 the Radical' (1866). From 1854, on the invitation of the editor, Hepworth Dixon, Massey wrote occasionally for the 'Athenæum.' He was also a contributor to the 'Leader,' which Thornton Leigh Hunt edited. Charles Dickens accepted verse from him for 'All the Year Round.' To the first number of 'Good Words' in 1860 he sent a poem on Garibaldi, and Alexander Strahan, the publisher of that periodical, gave him valuable encouragement.

Yet despite his popularity and his industry, Massey, who was now married, found it no easy task to bring up a family on the proceeds of his pen. With a view to improving his position, he had in 1854 left London for Edinburgh, where he wrote for 'Chambers's Journal' and Hugh Miller's 'Witness.' There, too, he took to lecturing at literary institutes on poetry, Pre-Raphaelite art, and Christian socialism. His earnestness drew large audiences. In 1857 he moved from Edinburgh to Monk's Green, Hertfordshire, and then to Brantwood, Coniston, which was at the time the property of a friend, William James Linton [q. v. Suppl. I]; it was acquired by Ruskin in 1871. During four years' subsequent residence at Rickmansworth, Massey found a helpful admirer in Lady Marian Alford [q. v. Suppl. I], who resided with her son the second Earl Brownlow at Ashridge Park, Berkhamsted. Lord Brownlow provided him in 1862 with a house on his estate, called Ward's Hurst, near Little Gaddesden. There Massey remained till 1877. In 1867 the second Earl Brownlow died, and his brother and successor married next year. Both episodes were celebrated by Massey in privately printed volumes of verse. While at Ward's Hurst, Massey closely studied Shakespeare's sonnets, on which he contributed an article to the 'Quarterly Review' in April 1864. He argued that Shakespeare wrote most of his sonnets for his patron Southampton. He amplified his view in a volume called 'Shakespeare's Sonnets never before interpreted' in 1866. This he rewrote in 1888 under the title of 'The Secret Drama of Shakespeare's Sonnets.' Despite his diffuseness, self-confidence, and mystical theorising, Massey brings together much valuable Shakespearean research.

At Ward's Hurst, too, Massey developed an absorbing interest in psychic phenomena. In 1871 he issued a somewhat credulous book on spiritualism which he afterwards withdrew. Subsequently he made three lecturing tours through America. The first tour lasted from Sept. 1873 to May 1874, and extended to California and Canada. The second tour, which began in Oct. 1883 and ended in Nov. 1885, included Australia and New Zealand, as well as America. A third American tour opened in Sept. 1888, but the fatal illness of a daughter brought it to an early close. His lectures dealt with many branches of poetry and art, but they were chiefly concerned with mesmerism, spiritualism, and mystical interpretation of the Bible. He printed privately many of his discourses. His faith in spiritualistic phenomena was lasting, and monopolised most of his later thought.

Massey's resources, which were always small, were augmented in 1863, on Lord Palmerston's recommendation, by a civil list pension of 10l., to which an addition of 30l. was made by Lord Salisbury in 1887. On leaving Ward's Hurst he lived successively at New Southgate (1877–90), at Dulwich (1890–3), and from 1893 at South Norwood. His closing years were devoted to a study of old Egyptian civilisation, in which he thought to trace psychic and spiritualistic problems to their source and to find their true solution. 'A Book of the Beginnings,' in two massive quarto volumes, appeared in 1881, and a sequel of the same dimensions, 'The Natural Genesis,' appeared in 1883. Finally he published 'Ancient Egypt the Light of the World, in twelve books' (1907). Massey believed that these copious, rambling, and valueless compilations deserved better of posterity than his poetry.

Massey died on 29 Oct. 1907 at Redcot, South Norwood hill, and was buried in Old Southgate cemetery. He was twice married: (1) on 8 July 1850 to Rosina Jane Knowles (buried in Little Gaddesden churchyard on 23 March 1866), by whom he had three daughters and a son; (2) in Jan. 1868 to Eva Byron, by whom he had four daughters and a son. Two daughters of each marriage survived their father.

