Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 20.djvu/24

 English Commonwealth,’ Forster, in January 1856, wrote a criticism of it in the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ entitled ‘The Civil Wars and Oliver Cromwell.’ On 24 Sept. 1856 he married Eliza Ann, daughter of Captain Robert Crosbie, R.N., and widow of Henry Colburn, the well-known publisher. He began his happy home life at 46 Montagu Square, where he remained until his removal to Palace Gate House, which in 1862 he built for himself at Kensington. In 1858 he collected his ‘Historical and Biographical Essays’ in two volumes, among which there appeared for the first time his two important papers headed respectively ‘The Debates on the Grand Remonstrance’ and ‘The Plantagenets and Tudors, a Sketch of Constitutional History.’ In 1860 he published his next work, ‘The Arrest of the Five Members by Charles I, a chapter of History Rewritten,’ and in the same year he brought out, in a greatly enlarged form, ‘The Debates on the Grand Remonstrance, November and December 1641, with an Introductory Essay on English Freedom under Plantagenet and Tudor Sovereigns.’ In November 1861 Forster resigned his secretaryship to the lunacy commission on his appointment as a commissioner of lunacy, with a salary of 1,500l. a year. In 1864 he expanded his ‘Life of Sir John Eliot’ into two large volumes, and apparently intended to elaborate in the same way his other memoirs of the statesmen of the Commonwealth. The deaths, within six years of each other, of three of his intimate friends gave him, however, other occupation. Landor dying on 17 Sept. 1864, Forster saw through the press a complete edition of his ‘Imaginary Conversations,’ and in 1869 published his ‘Life of Landor’ in 2 vols. Upon the death of Alexander Dyce in 1869, Forster corrected and published his friend's third edition of Shakespeare, and prefixed a memoir to the official catalogue of the library bequeathed by Dyce to the nation. Dickens's death, on 9 June 1870, led to his last finished biography. His ‘Life of Dickens’ was published, the first volume in 1872, the second in 1873, and the third in 1874. His failing health had induced him, in 1872, to resign his office of lunacy commissioner. He survived all his relations, and felt deeply each successive death. His father died in 1836; his younger brother, Christopher, in 1844; his mother, who is described as ‘a gem of a woman,’ in 1852; his sister Jane in 1853; and his sister Elizabeth in 1868. Forster had long meditated another work, for which he had collected abundant materials. This was the ‘Life of Jonathan Swift.’ The preface to it was dated June 1875, but the first and only finished volume was not published until the beginning of 1876. The hand of death was already upon him while he was correcting the last sheets of vol. i. for the press. He died on 1 Feb. 1876, almost upon the morrow of the book's publication. He was followed to his grave at Kensal Green, on 6 Feb., by a group of attached friends, his remains being buried there beside those of his favourite sister Elizabeth.

Those who knew Forster intimately were alone qualified to appreciate at their true worth his many noble and generous peculiarities. Regarded by strangers, his loud voice, his decisive manner, his features, which in any serious mood were rather stern and authoritative, would probably have appeared anything but prepossessing. Beneath his unflinching firmness and honesty of purpose were, however, the truest gentleness and sympathy. Outsiders might think him obstinate and overbearing, but in reality he was one of the tenderest and most generous of men. A staunch and faithful friend, he was always actively zealous as the peacemaker. While he had the heartiest enjoyment of society he had a curious impatience of little troubles, and yet the largest indulgence for the weakness of others. It was regarded as significant that Dickens allotted to him, in Lord Lytton's comedy of ‘Not so bad as we seem,’ the character of Mr. Hardman, who, with a severe and peremptory manner, is the readiest to say a kindly word for the small poet and hack pamphleteer. By his will, dated 26 Feb. 1874, he bequeathed to the nation ‘The Forster Collection,’ now at South Kensington. The library of eighteen thousand books includes the first folio of Shakespeare, the first edition of ‘Gulliver's Travels,’ 1726, with Swift's corrections in his own handwriting, and other interesting books. The manuscripts in the collection embrace nearly the whole of the original manuscripts of the world-famous novels of Charles Dickens. These, with forty-eight oil-paintings and an immense number of the choicest drawings, engravings, and curiosities, were left by Forster to his widow during her life, and afterwards, for the use of the public, to the Department of Science and Art at South Kensington. Mrs. Forster at once, however, surrendered her own right, to secure without delay the complete fulfilment of her husband's intention.

[The two principal sources of information in regard to the subject of this memoir, apart from the writer's own personal knowledge, are Professor Henry Morley's Sketch of John Forster, prefixed to the Handbook of the Forster and Dyce Collections, pp. 1–21, 1877, and the Rev. Whitwell Elwin's Monograph on John Forster,