Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 04.djvu/101

  hills, and broke my left leg all to pieces. This is the version which he wished to circulate, and this may be accepted in silence. The incident, however, whatever it was, occurred not in July, but in May 1848, and in the town of Bâle, where he had arrived the previous night. He was immediately taken to the hospital, where he was placed under the charge of his old friend, Dr. Frey, and of a Dr. Ecklin. The leg was obstinate in recovery, and eventually gangrene of the foot set in. On 9 Sept. it became necessary to amputate the limb below the knee-joint; this operation was very successfully performed by Dr. Ecklin. Beddoes had not, until this latter event, communicated with his friends in England, but during October and November he wrote to them very cheerfully, declining all offers of help, and chatting freely about literature. In December he walked out of his room twice, and proposed to go to Italy. His recovery was considered certain when, on 26 Jan. 1849, Dr. Ecklin was called to his bedside, and found him insensible. He died at 10 p.m. that night. On his bed was found a paper of directions, written in pencil with a firm hand, leaving his manuscripts to Kelsall, and adding: 'I ought to have been among other things a good poet.' He was buried in the cemetery of the hospital.

His old friend, Thomas Forbes Kelsall, undertook the task committed to him with the greatest zeal and piety. His first act was to publish the poem of Beddoes' life, the famous 'Death's Jest-Book, or the Fool's Tragedy,' in 1850. This play attracted instant attention. It is a story of the thirteenth century, founded on the historical fact that a Duke of Munsterberg, in Silesia, was stabbed to death by his court fool; the latter personage Beddoes has made the hero of his play under the name of Isbrand. This volume was so successful that Kelsall followed it in 1851 by the publication of 'Poems by the late Thomas Lovell Beddoes,' including several dramatic fragments mentioned above, and introduced by an anonymous memoir of Beddoes written by Kelsall. This memoir, which is a very accomplished and admirable piece of biography, contained a large number of interesting letters from Beddoes. In 1838 Beddoes had translated into German Grainger's work on the 'Structure of the Spinal Cord;' but it is supposed that he failed to find a publisher for it. He is known to have contributed largely to the political literature of the day in German prose and verse, but anonymously, and these fugitive pieces are entirely lost, with the exception of one unimportant fragment. In person Beddoes was like Keats, short and thick-set; in the last year of his life he allowed his beard to grow, and 'looked like Shakespeare.' His friends in the hospital spoke of his fortitude under suffering, and said that he always showed 'the courage of a soldier.' He died in possession of several farms at Shifnall and Hopesay, in Shropshire.



BEDDOME, BENJAMIN (1717–1795), writer of hymns, was the son of the Rev. John Beddome, baptist minister. Benjamin was born at Henley-in-Arden, South Warwickshire, 23 Jan. 1717, and received his education, first at an independent academy in Tenter Alley, Moorfields, London, and afterwards at the Baptist College, Bristol. He was intended for a surgeon, but felt it his duty to become a preacher of the gospel. In the year 1740 he entered upon his first and only ministerial charge at Bourton-on-the-Water, in East Gloucestershire, where he continued as pastor of the baptist church until his death. Beddome was distinguished by the fulness and accuracy of his biblical scholarship, but it is as a hymn-writer that he is best known. His hymns were composed to be sung after his sermons, being designed to illustrate the truths on which he had been preaching. A volume of his poetry, under the title 'Hymns adapted to Public Worship or Family Devotion,' comprising 830 pieces, was published in 1818. Selections from these are found in most of the hymnals now in use. Beddome wrote an 'Exposition on the Baptist Catechism,' which was published in 1752. Two posthumous volumes of discourses were also printed from his manuscripts, and appeared, the first in 1805, the second in 1835. This latter contained a memoir of the author. By his marriage with Miss Elizabeth Boswell, Beddome had two sons, Benjamin and Foskett, who, having prepared themselves for the medical profession, died prematurely at the ages respectively of 24 and 25 years.