Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/414

 of deafness which hampered his social intercourse in his last years he wrote, shortly before his death, that 'not only had he had times of exceeding happiness,' but that he had been 'continuously happy except for certain periods.'

Stephen received in later life many marks of distinction. He was chosen president of the London Library in 1892 in succession to Lord Tennyson, and keenly interested himself until his death in its welfare. He was made hon. LL.D. of Edinburgh in 1885, and of Harvard in 1890; hon. Litt.D. of Cambridge in June 1892, and D.Litt. of Oxford in December 1901. He was elected hon. fellow of Trinity Hall on 13 June 1891, and a corresponding member of the Massachusetts Historical Society in December 1895. In June 1902, on the occasion of King Edward VII's coronation, he was made K.C.B. He was also appointed in 1902 an original fellow of the British Academy, and he was for a year a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery.

In 1901 Stephen edited 'The Letters of J. R. Green,' and in 1903 he contributed to the 'National Review' four autobiographical articles called 'Early Impressions,' which showed no decline of vivacity (not reprinted). His latest books were the monograph on Hobbes (posthumously published, 1904), and 'English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century' (published on the day of his death), a course of lectures prepared in his capacity of Ford lecturer in English History at Oxford for 1903; illness compelled him to entrust to another the delivery of these lectures.

Stephen's health broke down in the spring of 1902, when internal cancer manifested itself. The disease progressed slowly. An operation in December 1902 gave temporary relief, but he thenceforth lived the life of an invalid. He was able to pursue some Hterary work till near the end. He died at his residence, 22 Hyde Park Gate, on 22 Feb. 1904. He was cremated at Golder's Green^ and his ashes were buried in Highgate cemetery.

Stephen's work, alike in literary criticism and philosophy, was characterised by a frank sincerity which is vivified by a humorous irony. His intellectual clarity bred an impatience of conventional religious beliefs and many strenuous endeavours to prove their hollowness. The champions of the broad church excited his particular disdain, because to his mind they were muddle-headed, and therefore futile. He put no trust in halfway houses. At the same time both in his philosophical and especially in his literary judgments there was an equability of temper which preserved him from excesses of condemnation or eulogy. Reserved and melancholy in manner, he enjoyed the affectionate admiration of his most enlightened contemporaries. His friend George Meredith sketched him in the 'Egoist' (1879) as Vernon Whitford, 'a Phoebus Apollo turned fasting friar'; Meredith admitted that the portrait did not do Stephen 'full justice, though the strokes within and without are correct' ( Letters, ii. 331). There was something of the Spartan in Stephen's constitution. But there was no harshness about his manly tenderness, his unselfishness, and his modesty. To younger associates he was always generous in encouragement and sympathy. His native magnanimity abhorred all the pettiness of temper which often characterises the profession of letters. It is supererogatory to dwell here on the services which he rendered to this Dictionary, alike as first editor and as chief contributor.

Stephen married (1) on 19 June 1867, Harriet Marian, younger daughter of Thackeray the novelist (she died in London suddenly on 28 Nov. 1875); (2) on 26 March 1878, Julia Prinsep, widow of Herbert Duckworth and youngest daughter of Dr. John Jackson, long a physician at Calcutta, by his wife Maria Pattle; she was a woman of singular beauty and refinement of mind, and died after a short illness on 5 May 1895. She was a close friend of G. F. Watts, who painted her portrait, of James Russell Lowell, and of George Meredith. She published in 1883 'Notes from Sick Rooms,' and wrote for this Dictionary a memoir of her aunt, Julia Margaret Cameron. By his first wife Stephen left a daughter, Laura; and by his second wife two sons and two daughters. The elder son, Julius Thoby Stephen (1880-1906), was at one time scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge.

A portrait by G. F. Watts, painted in 1878, belongs to his surviving son, Adrian. His 'Collected Essays' (10 vols., with introd. by Mr. James Bryce and Mr. Herbert) came out in 1907.

Stephen's friends founded in 1905 the Leshe Stephen lectureship in Cambridge, for the biennial delivery of a public lecture 'on some literary subject, including therein criticism, biography, and ethics.' The subscribers also presented an engraving of Stephen's portrait by Watts to the Athenæum, the London Library, Trinity Hall, Cambridge, the Working Men's College, London, and Harvard University,