Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 19.djvu/427

Ford  'Wife,' 1616, Shirley's 'Wedding,' 1629, Richard Brome's 'Northern Lass,' 1632; and he was one of the contributors to 'Jonsonus Virbius,' 1638. Dyce was of opinion that the verses to Barnabe Barnes were by the dramatist's cousin. Ford drops from sight after the publication of the 'Ladies Trial' in 1639; but in Gifford's time 'faint traditions in the neighbourhood of his birth-place' led to the supposition that, having obtained a competency from his professional practice, he retired to Devonshire to end his days. In the 'Time-Poets' ('Choice Drollery,' 1656) occurs the couplet- Deep in a dump John Forde was alone got, With folded arms and melancholy hat. It is certain that he had very little comic talent. That he was a favourite with playgoers is shown by his familiar appellation, 'Jack Ford,' mentioned by Heywood in the 'Hierarchie of Blessed Angels,' 1635- And hee's now but Jacke Foord that once was John. He was not dependent on the stage for his livelihood, and his plays bear few marks of haste. In the prologue to the 'Broken Heart' he declared that his 'best of art hath drawn this piece,' and in all his work the diction is studiously elaborated. Ford's works were first collected by Weber in 1811, 2 vols. 8vo. A more accurate edition was published by Gifford in 1827, 2 vols. 8vo. An edition of Ford and Massinger, by Hartley Coleridge, appeared in 1848; and in 1869 Dyce issued a revised edition of Gifford's 'Ford,' 3 vols. 8vo.

[Memoir by Gifford, revised by Dyce, prefixed to Ford's Works, 1869; Lamb's Specimens of Dramatic Poets; Swinburne's Essays and Studies.]  FORD, MICHAEL (d. 1758?), mezzotint engraver, was a native of Dublin, and a pupil of John Brooks, the mezzotint engraver [q. v.] When Brooks quitted Ireland about 1747, Ford set up as his successor at a shop on Cork Hill. He engraved a number of portraits in mezzotint, which on account of their scarcity are highly valued by collectors. Among them were James, earl of Barrymore, after Ottway; Maria Gunning, countess of Coventry, after F. Cotes; George II, after Hudson; William, earl of Harrington, after Du Pan; Richard St. George, after Slaughter; and William III, after Kneller. He also painted portraits, and engraved some himself, viz. Henry Boyle, speaker of the House of Commons in Ireland, Henry Singleton, lord chief justice of Ireland, and a double portrait of William III and Field-marshal Schomberg, the heads being copied from Kneller. Ford's address as publisher appears on some of the mezzotint engravings by Andrew Miller [q. v.] and James MacArdell [q. v.] With the former he seems to have been in rivalry, as they engraved the same subjects, notably Hogarth's full-length portrait of Gustavus Hamilton, viscount Boyne, in which Ford's print seems to be the earlier of the two. It is probable that Ford visited London, but this is not certain. On 28 Oct. 1758 the ship Dublin Trader, Captain White, left Parkgate for Dublin, and was never heard of again; she carried 70,000l. in money and 80,000l. in goods, and numerous passengers, among whom were Edward, fifth earl of Drogheda, and his son, Theophilus Cibber [q. v.], and others. There are grounds for supposing that Ford was also among the passengers. [Chaloner Smith's Brit. Mezzotinto Portraits; J. T. Gilbert's Hist. of Dublin, vol. ii.]  FORD, RICHARD (1796–1858), critic and author of 'The Handbook for Travellers in Spain,' was the son of Sir Richard Ford, a descendant of an old Sussex family, who was M.P. for East Grinstead in 1789, and for some time an under-secretary of state, and eventually chief police magistrate of London. He died, at the age of forty-seven, on 3 May 1806, leaving a family of three children. Richard, the eldest, born in 1796, was educated at Winchester School, from which he went to Trinity College, Oxford, where he graduated (B.A. 1817, M. A. 1822). He afterwards entered at Lincoln's Inn, and read in the chambers of Pemberton Leigh and Nassau Senior, but though called to the bar he never practised. In 1824 he married, and six years later he took up his quarters with his family in the south of Spain, where he spent the next four years, and acquired his extraordinary knowledge of the country by a series of long riding tours made between 1830 and 1834 from his headquarters in the Alhambra or at Seville. Shortly after his return from Spain he bought a small property at Heavitree, near Exeter, where his brother, the Rev. James Ford, a prebendary of the cathedral, was living. He there built himself a house and laid out grounds with an artistic taste which made his residence one of the local lions of East Devon. His employment suggested an essay on cob walls, in which he traced the analogy between the earthen walls of the Devonshire peasantry and the tapia or concrete structures of the Moors and Phoenicians, and this, written in 1837, was the first of a series of articles that continued to appear in the 'Quarterly Review' until the year before his death, when