Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/208

 of keeper of Oriental manuscripts, and in 1871 he completed the second part of the 'Catalogus codicum manuscriptorum orientalium,' of which the first portion had been published by William Cureton [q. v.] in 1846. Besides Arabic and Sanskrit, Rieu had an extensive knowledge of Persian and Turkish. At the British Museum he drew up the 'Catalogue of Persian Manuscripts' (4 vols. 1879-95) and the 'Catalogue of Turkish Manuscripts' (1888). These voliimes constitute an invaluable storehouse of information concerning Mohammedan literary history, and show a high degree of critical scholarship.

Rieu, who was for many years professor of Arabic and Persian at University College, London, received a congratulatory address from the University of Bonn on the jubilee of his doctorate (6 Sept. 1893). In 1894, despite his advanced age, he was elected Adams professor of Arabic in the University of Cambridge in succession to William Robertson Smith [q. v.]. Of a gentle and retiring disposition, he resigned his post at the British Museum in 1895, and died at 28 Woburn Square, London, on 19 March 1902. He married in 1871 Agnes, daughter of Julius Heinrich Nisgen, by whom he had issue five sons and two daughters. A portrait (c. 1887) by his son, Charles Rieu, is in the possession of his widow.

 RIGBY, JOHN (1834–1903), judge, born at Runcorn, Cheshire, on 4 Jan. 1834, was second son of Thomas Rigby of that place by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Joseph Kendall of Liverpool. He received his early education at the institution which afterwards became Liverpool College, and matriculating at Trinity College, Cambridge, in Michaelmas term 1852, he was elected to an open scholarship there in 1854. In 1856 he graduated as second wrangler and second Smith's prizeman, taking a second class in the classical tripos. He became fellow of his college in the same year, and proceeded M.A. in 1859. He entered as a student at Lincoln's Inn on 17 Oct. 1855, and was called to the bar on 26 Jan. 1860. Starting as 'devil' in the chambers of Richard Baggallay, Q.C. [q. v. Suppl. I], one of the leaders of the chancery bar, he rapidly acquired a large practice both in chambers and in court, and in 1875 Baggallay, who was then attorney-general, made him junior equity counsel to the treasury, a post which is held to confer the reversion of a judgeship. Rigby, however, was not content to wait; he took silk in 1880 and attached himself to the court of Mr. Justice Kay [q. v. Suppl. I], where he obtained a complete ascendancy both over his rivals and over the judge himself. Within a very few years he was in a position to confine his main practice to the court of appeal, the House of Lords, and the privy council, only going before the judges at first instance with a special fee. The rivals with whom he divided the work were Horace (afterwards Baron) Davey [q. v. Suppl. II], Edward (afterwards Lord) Macnaghten, and Montague Cookson (afterwards Crackanthorpe). In May 1884 he was made a bencher of his inn.

In December 1885 he entered parliament as the liberal member for the Wisbech division of Cambridgeshire, and in the split which arose out of the introduction of the home rule bill of 1886 he followed Gladstone, and made a powerful speech in support of the second reading (28 May 1886). At the general election of that year he lost his seat, and did not return to the House of Commons until July 1892, when he was elected for Forfarshire. So little had his fame penetrated beyond legal circles, that he was denounced in his new constituency as an English carpet-bagger on the look-out for [a county court judgeship. He was appointed solicitor-general by Gladstone on 20 Aug. 1892, receiving the honour of knighthood, and on 3 May 1894 he became attorney-general in succession to Sir Charles (afterwards Lord) Russell (of Killowen); a few weeks later he took the place in the court of appeal vacated by his old rival Sir Horace Davey, then appointed to be a lord of appeal, and was admitted to the privy council.

Rigby owed his success at the bar to a complete mastery of the science of equity, to his ingenuity and pertinacity, and to his impressive and rugged personality. 'He had a natural gift for rhetoric,' says a writer in 'The Times,' 'in which his fervid utterance seemed to contend with an almost pedantic desire to measure his words and give weight to every syllable.' He had a rare faculty of being at his best in a bad case, and of never losing confidence either in the integrity of his client or in his ultimate success with the court. During his short term as law officer he gave invaluable assistance to Sir William Harcourt 