Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 11.djvu/28

Cleasby formed the plan of his 'Icelandic-English Dictionary.' The work was fairly commenced in April, and continued to be the chief interest of the too short remainder of a life greatly tried by family and business cares and attacks of rheumatism and liver complaint, threatening to end in paralysis. He oscillated incessantly between England, the German baths, and Copenhagen, where he had amanuenses continually at work, some of whom occasionally travelled with him. In the summer of 1847 his health grew worse, and on 6 Oct. he died of an attack of typhoid fever, not at first considered serious. The poetical vocabulary, prepared under his direction by Dr. Egilsson, was ready for publication in 1846. In the following year Cleasby caused five words to be set up in type as specimens of the prose dictionary. Nothing else appeared to exist in a state fit for print, and arrangements were made for the completion of the work at Copenhagen. 'Mr. Cleasby's heirs,' says Dean Liddell, 'paid a considerable sum of money to certain persons; but in 1854 came a demand for more money, and as it seemed doubtful whether the work was likely to be finished in any reasonable time, and on any reasonable terms, it was determined that the whole of the manuscripts should be sent to London.' Cleasby's own manuscript materials, however, were retained, and the transcripts made after his death proved so unsatisfactory that the whole work had to be done over again. In 1864 the task was undertaken by Mr. Gudbrand Vigfusson, an Icelander, and, at the instance of Sir G. W. Dasent, defrayed by a grant from the delegates of the Clarendon Press. The work, a noble monument of industry and scholarship, was eventually completed in 1873, and published with a preface by Dean Liddell, and an introduction and memoir of Cleasby by Sir G. W. Dasent. Cleasby's own autographic materials, eventually given up, arrived too late to be used, and proved in every respect superior to the transcripts which had cost so much time and money. 'The dictionary as it now stands,' says Dasent, ' is far more the work of Vigfusson than of Cleasby;' but while many men would have been competent to make good the deficiencies and amend the imperfections of Cleasby's unfinished labours, there was perhaps not another who, with every temptation to lead a life of leisure and amusement, would have voluntarily, from pure philological and literary enthusiasm, have engaged in an undertaking so arduous and expensive. The value of his work to his own country, as well as to Iceland, is ably pointed out in an article in the 'Edinburgh Review,' vol. cxl., by Mr. Henry Reeve. The specimens of his correspondence given in Dasent's 'Memoirs' exhibit him in the light of a sensible and amiable man, with strong family affections.

[Dasent's Memoirs prefixed to Cleasby and Vigfusson's Icelandic-English Dictionary; Edinburgh Review, vol. cxl.] 

CLEAVER, EUSEBY (1746–1819), archbishop of Dublin, was a native of Buckinghamshire, being a son of the Rev. William Cleaver, master of a school at Twyford in that county, and a younger brother of William Cleaver [q. v.], bishop successively of Chester, Bangor, and St. Asaph. He was educated on the foundation at Westminster School, whence he was elected to Christ Church, Oxford, in 1763. He graduated B.A. in 1767, M.A. in 1770, B.D. and D.D. in 1783. In 1774 he was presented to the rectory of Spofforth, Yorkshire, which he held till 1783, when Lord Egremont, whose tutor he had been, presented him to the rectories of Tillington and of Petworth, Sussex. He became prebendary of Hova Villa in the church of Chichester in 1787, and in the same year, through the interest of his brother, the bishop of St. Asaph, who had been tutor to the Marquis of Buckingham, he was appointed chaplain to that nobleman, then going to Ireland as viceroy for the second time.

In March 1789 he was promoted to the sees of Cork and Ross, and in June the same year he was translated to the sees of Ferns and Leighlin. He suffered heavy losses by the rebellion of 1798, having his palace plundered and his library and property of all kinds destroyed, but he himself escaped personal violence. In August 1809 he was raised to the archbishopric of Dublin. His mind eventually became impaired, and the functions of the see were discharged by a coadjutor for some years previously to his death at Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in December 1819. His wife, by whom he had several children, died 1 May 1816.

This prelate was 'as eminent for his mildness and condescension as he was for his great piety and extensive learning.' His only publication is a 'Sermon preached before the Incorporated Society in Dublin for Promoting English Protestant Schools in Ireland,' Dublin, 1792, 4to. A portrait of him, painted by Stewart, has been engraved by J. Grozer.

[Welsh's Alumni Westmon. ed. Phillimore, pp. 362, 372, 379, 460, 462; Cat. of Oxford Graduates, ed. 1851, p. 132; Le Neve's Fasti, ed. Hardy, i. 279; Gent, Mag. lxxxix. pt. ii. p. 564; Cotton's Fasti Eccl. Hibern. ed. 1847, i. 190, ii. 27, 343; Mant's Hist. of the Church of Ireland, ii. 757.]