Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 11.djvu/27

Cleasby 1711, when it ceased, and Clayton and his partners gave concerts at the Music Room in York Buildings. On 24 May 1711 settings by Clayton of a version of Dryden's 'Alexander's Feast' (altered by John Hughes), and of Harrison's 'Passion of Sappho, were performed, but both works failed, after which nothing is heard of the luckless composer. He is said to have died about 1730. Clayton is of importance in the history of English music as the first to acclimatise legitimate opera in England, but as a composer his position is summed up in the words of his anonymous contemporary: 'If a reward was to be ordain'd for him that made the worst musick in all the world, the author of Rosamond wou'd have reason to say he had not lost his labour, since he wou'd have an undoubted title to the gratification.'

[Burney's Hist. of Music, iv. 199-204; Hawkins's Hist. of Music (ed. 1853), 810-14; Chamberlayne's Present State of England, 1692-1704; Grove's Dict. of Music, i.; Clayton's Queens of Song, i. 2, 7, 11; Busby's Anecdotes, i. 71; Georgian Era, iv.; Daily Courant for 1705 and 1707; Genest's Hist. of the Stage, i. 318; London Gazette, No. 4095; A Critical Discourse upon some Operas in England (1709), 65.]

 CLEASBY, ANTHONY (1804–1879), judge, was born 27 Aug. 1804. His father, Stephen Cleasby, was a Russia broker, who carried on a prosperous business at 11 Union Court, Broad Street, in the city of London, and died at Craig House, Westmoreland, 31 Aug. 1844; having married, 4 Feb. 1797, at Stoke Newington, Mary, second daughter of George John of Penzance. Anthony was educated at Brook Green, Hammersmith, and then at Eton, 1820–3; he abandoned an intention of entering the army, because of an illness in 1819 which rendered him lame for life. He matriculated from Trinity College, Cambridge, in October 1823, was third wrangler and B.A. in 1827, fellow of his college 1828, and M.A. 1830. He was admitted a student of the Inner Temple 30 Jan. 1827, and called to the bar there 10 June 1831, and then went the northern circuit. He soon became known as a most accurate and careful junior; he was a master of the science of special pleading, and learned in all branches of the law. He was not, however, a successful nisi prius advocate, but obtained a large practice as a junior. His opinion was sought by commercial clients in patent cases, mercantile disputes, and real property cases. In 1852 and again in 1859 he was an unsuccessful conservative candidate for East Surrey. He had previously purchased an estate called Ledgers, six miles east of Croydon. He was appointed a queen's counsel on 22 Feb. 1861, and in the same year became a bencher of his inn. In Feb. 1868 he contested the university of Cambridge without success against Mr. Beresford Hope. Cleasby became a baron of the court of exchequer on 25 Aug. 1868, was nominated a serjeant on the same day, admitted on 2 Nov., and on the 9th of the following month was knighted. As a judge he was so cautious and diffident that he won little popular applause. In the criminal courts he was never quite at home. The juries were puzzled by his extremely conscientious efforts to explain the whole law. In his written judgments, however, he spared no pains, and they were always thorough and exhaustive. He retired on a pension in October 1878; went to his country house, Penoyre, near Brecon, which he had purchased after his elevation to the bench; and died on 6 Oct. 1879. He married, on 26 March 1836, Lucy Susan, youngest daughter of Walter Fawkes of Farnley Hall, Yorkshire.

[Law Magazine and Review, February 1880, pp. 113–27; Illustrated London News, 23 Jan. 1869, p. 93, with portrait; Cleasby and Vigfusson's Icelandic-English Dictionary (1869), pp. lxi–civ; Times, 8 Oct. 1879, p. 6.]  CLEASBY, RICHARD (1797–1847), philologist, brother of Sir Anthony Cleasby [q. v.], and eldest son of Stephen Cleasby, was born on 30 Nov. 1797. He was educated at a private school, and for some years assisted his father in his business, but in 1824 gave up trade and proceeded to the continent to devote himself to the study of philosophy and literature. After spending four years principally in Italy and Germany, he returned for a winter's term at the university of Edinburgh, repaired again to the continent, and, after much roaming, settled down in 1830 at Munich to study philosophy under Schelling and old German under Schmeller and Massmann. Philology gradually encroached on philosophy, and his excursions into almost every district of Germany, to which he devoted all the time he could spare from his studies, procured him an extraordinary knowledge of German dialects. A liver complaint, which he had contracted in Italy, compelled him to frequently resort to Carlsbad, and he occasionally revisited England for a brief period. His first visit to Denmark and Sweden was in May 1834, and he became gradually more and more attracted by Scandinavian subjects. In 1839 he collated the 'Codex Argenteus' at Upsala, and in January 1840, 'to get an unaccountable and most scandalous blank filled up,' he 