Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 08.djvu/273

 Theatrical Fund at their annual dinner in that year. In 1829 he became elocutionary lecturer of King's College, Aberdeen, and gave lectures on oratory, poetry, and other literary subjects in the large towns of England. He afterwards proceeded to America, where he lectured on the English poets, and on returning to England gave evening discourses at the leading athenæums on what he had seen during his visit to the western hemisphere. About 1846 he was appointed master of the English language and literature in the Edinburgh Academy. In the winter of 1847–8 he gave readings of the English poets in connection with the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution. Some years after he became lecturer on elocution to the free church colleges of Edinburgh and Glasgow. He died at his residence, 2 West Newington, Edinburgh, 21 April 1877. He was a man of great literary refinement, and had an extensive acquaintance with the literature of Greece and Rome, as well as with that of England and France. He married, in 1818, Miss Percy of Whitby, by whom he had a numerous family; his youngest son, Michael Talbot Calvert, made a reputation as a tragic actor, under the stage name of Henry Talbot. Calvert was the author of: 1. ‘A Defence of the Acted Drama,’ in a letter to T. Best, Hull, 1822. 2. ‘Principles of Elocution,’ by T. Ewing, thoroughly revised and greatly improved by F. B. Calvert, 1852; another edition, 1870. 3. A Letter to the Very Rev. Dean Ramsay, Edinburgh, on ‘The Art of Reading and Preaching distinctly,’ 1869. 4. ‘The De Oratore of Cicero,’ translated by F. B. Calvert, M.A., 1870. 5. ‘An Ode to Shakespeare.’

[Smith's Manchester School Reg. ii. 233. iii. 334; The Era, 6 May 1877, p. 13.] 

CALVERT, FREDERICK CRACE (1819–1873), chemist, was born in London on 14 Nov. 1819, and was the son of a Colonel Calvert. At the age of sixteen he left London for France, where he remained till 1846. One result of this long stay abroad was that till the end of his life he spoke English with a French accent, and was, in consequence, frequently taken for a foreigner. After studying at Rouen under Gerardin, and in Paris at the Sorbonne, the Collège de France, and the École de Médecine, he held for a short time the post of manager of Messrs. Robiquet & Pelletier's chemical works, but this post he vacated on being appointed assistant to the eminent chemist, Chevreul. It was under Chevreul (his old master as he would always call him) that Calvert's serious chemical work began, and it was the influence of Chevreul which directed his researches towards those branches of industrial chemistry in which he acquired his reputation. In 1846 he returned to England and was appointed professor of chemistry at the Royal Institution in Manchester, where he had settled in practice as a consulting chemist. He now devoted himself almost entirely to questions of industrial chemistry, tanning, the desulphurisation of coke, the protection of iron ships from rust, the manufacture of chlorate of potash, iron puddling, calico-printing, &c. A few years later he took up the manufacture of coal-tar products, especially of phenic or carbolic acid, which he was the first to manufacture in a pure state in this country. Its use as a disinfectant and for therapeutic purposes is due, it may be said, entirely to him. The manufacture of carbolic acid was commenced by him on a small scale in 1859, and in 1865 he established large works at Manchester for its production. He contributed largely to scientific literature, both English and French; his papers are to be found in the ‘Comptes Rendus,’ the ‘Royal Society's Proceedings,’ the ‘Annales de Chimie,’ the ‘Philosophical Magazine,’ the ‘British Association Reports,’ the ‘Journal of the Society of Arts,’ and elsewhere. A full but not complete list of the papers, and unfortunately without references, is given in the biographical notice prefixed to the second edition of his work on ‘Dyeing and Calico-printing.’ He delivered five courses of ‘Cantor’ lectures at the Society of Arts on applied chemistry. His death was the result of an illness contracted at Vienna, whither he had gone to serve as a juror at the International Exhibition of 1873. He died at Manchester 24 Oct. 1873.

[A life is given in the Soc. of Arts Journal, xxi. (1873) 919; a very full account of Calvert's scientific work is given as an introduction to the second edition of his Dyeing and Calico-printing, Manchester, 1876; short notices appear in Journ. Chem. Soc. xxvii. 1198; Chem. News, xxviii. (1873) 224. For scientific writings see Royal Soc. Cat. Scientific Papers s. v. Crace-Calvert.] 

CALVERT, GEORGE, first (1580?–1632), statesman, son of Leonard Calvert and Alice, daughter of John Crosland of Crosland, was born at Kipling in the chapelry of Bolton in Yorkshire about 1580. In the Oxford University register of matriculations, Calvert, who matriculated from Trinity College on 12 July 1594, is entered as ‘annos natus 14.’ He obtained the degree of B.A. on 23 Feb. 1597, and was created M.A. on 30 Aug. 1605, during the visit of King James to Oxford. After leaving Oxford he travelled for a time, and on his