Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/266

 graphic accuracy, easily detached from their context and remembered for their own sakes. His prose style, without attaining to eloquence, which he never attempted, is a pattern of dignified simplicity, and of lucidity slightly tinted by the hues of feeling. His critical powers were of the highest, but were impaired by his besetting sin of egotism. A few of the greatest writers excepted, he could take no strong interest in any man's work but his own; his attitude towards other men's ideas was that of Omar towards the Alexandrian library, and his essays on their writings affect with a painful sense of inadequacy. They are, nevertheless, well worth reading for the detached remarks, often most subtle and penetrating. His religious and moral aphorisms also have much worth: and this is even more true of those casually expressed in the fragments of correspondence published by Mr. Champneys than of those which he himself gave to the world. In other departments of thought he is little better than a wasted force, chiefly on account of his disharmony with his own age.

Patmore's portrait, painted in 1894 by Mr. J. S. Sargent, R.A., is in the National Portrait Gallery. Several other portraits, as well as likenesses of members of his family, are reproduced in Mr. Champnevs's biography.

(1860–1883), the youngest son of Coventry Patmore by his first wife, was born on 8 May 1860. He was chiefly educated at Ushaw College, where he obtained numerous prizes, but which, to judge by his youthful letters published by Mr. Champneys, cannot have done much to stimulate his intellectual powers. Apparently, however, this childishness was but, in Emersonian phrase, 'the screen and sheath in which Pan protects his well-beloved flower;' for the little poems published after his death are not only excellent in themselves, but constitute a psychical phenomenon. They possess in an eminent degree those qualities of ease, symmetry, and finish which are usually the last to be expected in the work of so young a man; they are sufficiently like the elder Patmore's work to seem almost written by him, while yet differentiated from his by a subtle and indefinable aroma of their own. That Henry Patmore would have proved a charming lyrical poet can hardly be doubted ; whether he would have been anything more can scarcely be conjectured in the absence of any clear evidence how far his limitations were natural, and how far due to a mistaken system of education. His health had always been feeble, and, debilitated by a serious illness in 1881, he succumbed, on 24 Feb. 1883, to an attack of pleurisy. A selection from his poems was privately printed at Mr. Daniell's Oxford press, and partly incorporated with the edition of his father's works published in 1886.  PATRICK, ROBERT WILLIAM COCHRAN- (1842–1897), under-secretary of state for Scotland. [See .]  PATTERSON, JAMES BROWNE (1833–1895), Australian statesman, born at Link Hall in Northumberland on 18 Nov. 1833, was the youngest son of James Patterson, a district road inspector. He was educated at Alnwick, and emigrated to Victoria in 1852 on the discovery of gold. After mining unsuccessfully at the Forest Creek goldfields, he engaged in farming on the river Loddon at Glenlyon, near Daylesford, in 1856, and finally settled in the Castlemaine district, where he conducted the business of a slaughterman at Chewton. On 5 Dec. 1870 Patterson, after two unsuccessful candidatures, was returned to the colonial legislative assembly for Castlemaine, a seat which he retained until his death. He was a strong advocate of protection in trade, supported the ministry of Sir James McCulloch [q. v.] in 1870 and 1871, and was an active opponent of (Sir) Charles Gavan Duffy's administration in 1871 and 1872. He supported James Goodall Francis [q. v.], who came into power in June 1872, but not very strenuously; and when, in July 1874, Francis transferred the premiership to George Biscoe Kerferd, Patterson joined the opposition, led by (Sir) Graham Berry. On the resignation of the Kerferd ministry in August 1875, Berry took office and gave Patterson the position of commissioner of public works and president of the board of land and works. On 7 Oct. the ministry were defeated by a coalition between McCulloch and Kerferd, and Patterson remained out of office until May 1877, when Berry, being returned with an immense majority, restored Patterson to the same 