Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 23.djvu/302

 Grote also had trained musical tastes), she cultivated friendly relations with Mendelssohn and others whether composers or performers, and undertook a certain charge of Jenny Lind in the early days of that great singer. Her first acknowledged work was a ’Memoir of the Life of Ary Scheffer,' the painter, a graphic sketch that reached a second edition in 1860, the year of its publication. Two years later she issued a volume of 'Collected Papers' (only some of which had before seen the light), partly of literary interest, partly of political, and partly of economic; these last in a sense agreeing with Grote's views from the old radical period on questions of poor-law, population, and the like. She had always been a diligent keeper of diaries and notebooks, as well as a sprightly letter-writer, and having thus an abundance of materials began to write a biographical account of her husband while he was still alive. The work was rapidly pushed forward on his death in 1871, though she had already reached her eightieth year, and was published in 1873 as 'The Personal Life of George Grote:' more lively and piquant as a composition than always quite accurate in its statements of fact. She had previously (in 1866) printed for private circulation a sketch entitled 'The Philosophical Radicals of 1832, comprising the Life of Sir William Molesworth and some Incidents connected with the Reform Movement from 1832 to 1842;' this sketch has special interest and value as regards Molesworth. Other pieces, having a bearing on Grote's life or her own, printed for private distribution in her last years, have all been referred to under, except one small pamphlet (1878), 'A brief Retrospect of the Political Events of 1831-1832, as illustrated by the Greville and Althorp Memoirs,' Though her health suffered from an almost fatal fever following upon premature delivery in 1821 of an only child (a boy), who lived but a week, she had an excellent constitution, which procured her an old age of uncommon animation and vigour; her intellectual faculties, not less remarkable than her social gifts, remaining active to the last. She died at Shiere on 29 Dec. 1878, in her eighty-seventh year, and was buried there.



GROTE, JOHN (1813–1866), philosopher, younger brother of [q. v.], was born at Beckenham in Kent on 5 May 1813. Educated privately, first with a view to Haileybury and the Indian civil service, afterwards (on his father's death in 1830) to the university, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, 'in October 1831, and, taking a high place in classics at graduation in 1835, was elected fellow of his college in 1837. Till 1845 he continued to reside in college, at first with interludes of foreign travel. The wish of his devout mother [see may have helped to direct him to the clerical profession, but there is evidence that he had early an independent religious bias. Ordained deacon in 1842 and priest in 1844, he gave occasional help in their parishes to college friends, till, at the beginning of 1847, he was appointed to the perpetual curacy of Wareside, near Ware. In the summer of the same year he succeeded to the college living of Trumpington, close to Cambridge, where he lived ever afterwards. His parochial preaching aimed chiefly at edification, and was simple and direct in expression. The native bent towards reflective thought which, alone in a large family, he shared with his famous elder brother, declared itself from his undergraduate days. In philosophy he never was a very wide reader, as he was in general literature; but he showed great independence of view, especially on all matters pertaining to human conduct. His most potent philosophical stimulus came from [q. v.], with whom he consorted much at Cambridge from about 1842; most closely in Ellis's last years (1852-1859) spent at Trumpington. The intellectual debt was warmly acknowledged in the introduction to his 'Exploratio Philosophica' (1865), and was repaid in a remarkable study of his friend's character left among his papers and printed in the 'Contemporary Review' (1872). He published a 'Commemoration Sermon' in 1849, and 'A Few Remarks on a Pamphlet by Mr. Shilleto, entitled "Thucydides or Grote?"' in 1851, forcibly repelling an unworthy attack upon his brother. Otherwise he had printed nothing except a classical article or two, though he had written much, when he was elected to succeed Whewell as Knightbridge professor of moral philosophy in 1855. Besides lecturing he now wrote copiously on philosophical subjects, but rather to clear his own mind than, for some time yet,with any definite view to publication. An essay on 'Old Studies and New' (in 'Cambridge Essays,' 1856) and a few pamphlets were his only productions until, in the spring of 1865, he hurried out his 'Exploratio Philosophica: Rough Notes on Modern Intellectual Science.' The book was announced as a first part, to be presently followed by a second, much of which was already written; but he died on 21 Aug. 1866, before anything