Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 47.djvu/109

 Gilliland's Dramatic Mirror; Dibdin's Edinburgh Stage; Doran's Annals of the Stage, ed. Lowe.] 

QUICK, ROBERT HEBERT (1831−1891), schoolmaster and educational writer, was born in London on 20 Sept. 1831, being the eldest son of James Carthew Quick, a city merchant of some eminence. He was Bent to school at Harrow, but soon removed on account of delicate health, and proceeded from a private tutor's to Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating in the mathematical tripos of 1854. He was ordained in 1855, and worked with his lifelong friend, the Rev. J. Llewelyn Davies, as an unpaid curate, first at St. Mark's, Whitechapel, and afterwards in Marylebone. A residence in Germany first turned his thoughts to teaching, and, on his return to England in 1858, he accepted a mastership in Lancaster grammar school. Thence he passed in rapid succession to Guildford grammar school, Hurstpierpoint, and Cranley, where, under Dr. Merriman, he gave valuable help in the organisation of the first successful public school for the middle classes. In 1870 he was appointed by Dr. Butler to an assistant-mastership at Harrow, which he held for four years. For the next few years he was head of a preparatory school, first in London and then at Guildford. In 1881 he was appointed by the university of Cambridge to give the first course of lectures on the history of education under the newly formed syndicate for the training of teachers. In 1883 he was presented by the master and fellows of Trinity College to the vicarage of Sedbergh, Yorkshire, which living he resigned in 1807. His remaining years were passed in retirement at Redhill, though to the last he continued to contribute to professional papers, to lecture, and to maintain an active correspondence with the leaders of education on the continent and in America. While on a visit to Professor (afterwards Sir John Robert) [q. v.] at Cambridge, he was suddenly struck with spinal apoplexy, and died, after a few days of painless illness, on 9 March 1891. In 1876 he married Bertha, daughter of General Chase Parr of the Bombay army.

The work by which Quick will live is his ‘Essays on Educational Reformers’ (1st edit. 1868). He, first of modern English writers, succeeded in making a book on education readable and at the same time sober and rational; and the secret of his success was that he criticised past theories and methods by the light of living experience. Several pirated editions were published in America, but it was not till 1890 that a second and enlarged English edition was published, the preparation of which was the main work of his last years. Besides numerous pedagogical papers and pamphlets, dealing mainly with the training of teachers and methods of teaching, he edited Locke's ‘Thoughts concerning Education’ (1880), and reprinted with introduction Mulcaster's ‘Positions’ (1888). His article on Froebel in the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica’ (9th edit.) was published separately.



QUILLINAN, EDWARD (1791−1851), poet, born at Oporto on 12 Aug. 1791, was the son of Edward Quillinan, an Irishman of a good but impoverished family, who had become a prosperous wine merchant at Oporto. His mother, whose maiden name was Ryan, died soon after her son had been sent, in 1798, to England, to be educated at Roman catholic schools. Returning to Portugal, he entered his father's counting-house, but this distasteful employment ceased upon the French invasion under Junot in 1807, which obliged the family to seek refuge in England. After spending some time without any occupation, he entered the army as a cornet in a cavalry regiment, from which, after seeing some service at Walcheren. he passed into another regiment, stationed at Canterbury. A satirical pamphlet in verse, entitled ‘The Ball Room Votaries,’ involved him in a series of duels, and compelled him to exchange into the 3rd dragoon guards, with which he served through the latter portion of the Peninsular war. In 1814 he made his first serious essay in poetry by publishing ‘Dunluce Castle, a Poem,’ which was printed at the Lee Priory Press, 4to; and it was followed by ‘Stanzas by the author of Dunluce Castle’ (1814, 4to), by ‘The Sacrifice of Isabel,’ a more important effort (1816); and by ‘Elegiac Verses’ addressed to Lady Brydges in memory of her son, Grey Matthew Brydges (Lee Priory, 1817, 4to). In 1817 he married Jemima, second daughter of Sir [q. v.], and subsequently served with his regiment in Ireland. In 1819 ‘Dunluce Castle’ attracted the notice of (1789−1842) [q. v.] the original Morgan O'Doherty of ‘Blackwood's Magazine,’ who ridiculed it in a review entitled ‘Poems by a Heavy Dragoon.’ Quillinan deferred his rejoinder until 1821, when he attacked Wilson and Lockhart, whom he erroneously supposed to be the writers, in his ‘Retort Courteous,’ a satire largely consisting of passages from ‘Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk,’ done into verse. The misunderstanding was dissipated through the