Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/436

 was given the temporary rank of major-general, succeeding to the establishment on 6 May following. His services as deputy adjutant-general were retained for three months over the usual five years, and he left the war office on 30 June 1886, retiring from the service with the honorary rank of lieutenant-general on 29 Jan. 1887.

On leaving the war office he resided first at Haywards Heath and afterwards at Ewell. The Suez Canal board, of which he became vice-president in 1887, frequently called him to Paris, and he undertook the administration of the 'Lady Strangford Hospital' at Port Said after her death in 1887. In the same year he was appointed a visitor of the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. In 1894 he attended de Lesseps's funeral in Paris, and delivered a set oration in French. He paid his last visit to Egypt in 1899 to be present at the unveiling of de Lesseps's statue at the entrance to the canal at Port Said. Stokes, who was also director in later life of several public companies, died suddenly of apoplexy at Ewell on 17 Nov. 1902. He was elected an associate member of the Institution of Civil Engineers on 13 Jan. 1875.

He married at Grahamstown, Cape Colony, on 6 Feb. 1849, Henrietta Georgina de Villiers (d. 1893), second daughter of Charles Maynard, of Grahamstown. By her he had three sons and three daughters. The second son, Arthur Stokes, is a brevet colonel in the royal artillery and a D.S.O.

 STOKES, WHITLEY (1830–1909), Celtic scholar, eldest son of William Stokes, M.D. [q. v.], by his wife Mary Black, was born in Dublin on 28 Feb. 1830. His family tree does not contain a single native Irish name. He entered St. Columba's College at Rathfarnham, co. Dublin, on 8 Oct. 1845, and left on 16 Dec. in the same year. Denis Coffey, a Munster man, was the Irish teacher there, and his 'Primer of the Irish Language,' which had just appeared, was probably the first Irish book placed in the hands of Stokes. The next was undoubtedly the 'Grammar of the Irish Language' of John O'Donovan, published in 1845 at the expense of St. Columba's College. His first guide to the vocabulary of Irish was the Irish dictionary of Edward O'Reilly, as is shown by Stokes's interleaved, annotated, and marked copy of the book. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1847, and graduated B.A. in 1851. In his father's house he became acquainted with George Petrie [q. v.], deep in Irish architecture and music, with John O'Donovan [q. v.], the best Irish scholar of the time and the greatest of all Irish topographers, and with Eugene O'Curry [q. v.], the most accomplished modern representative of the ancient Irish scribes. Stokes thus had the opportunity of laying a broad foundation for every part of Irish learning. He elected early to devote himself to the study of the words and forms of the Irish language, and regarded Irish literature as chiefly interesting in so far as it furnished material for comparative philology. Rudolf Thomas Siegfried, a philologist from Tübingen, first assistant librarian of Trinity College and afterwards professor there of Sanscrit and comparative philology, a man of much learning and great enthusiasm, became his friend and influenced his studies, and the vast field for philological research opened by the publication of the 'Grammatica Celtica' of John Caspar Zeuss in 1853 decided the direction of the studies which Stokes pursued with unremitting industry till death. He took some lessons in Irish from John O'Donovan, but never acquired its pronunciation, and used always to read Irish exactly as English schoolboys once read Latin, according to the English powers of the letters, and he never sounded the 'r,' nor had he any idea of quantity.

Stokes became a student of the Liner Temple on 9 Oct. 1851, and was called to the bar on 17 Nov. 1855. He was a pupil of Cayley, Cairns, and Chitty, and practised in London for six years till 1862, when he went to Madras and afterwards to Calcutta. In India he formed a friendship with Sir Henry Sumner Maine [q. v.], and partly through his influence, after being secretary to the governor-general's legislative council, was made secretary to the legislative department in 1865, and was from 1877 to 1882 law member of the council of the governor-general. In 1879 he was appointed president of the Indian law commission. He had published in London 'A Treatise on the Liens of Legal Practitioners' in 1860, and one on 'Powers of Attorney' in 1861. He drafted many Indian consolidation acts and the bulk of the codes of procedure, and published 'Hindu Law Books' at Madras in 1865, the Anglo-Indian codes (two volumes) in 1887–8, with supplements 1889-91, and three other books 