Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 53.djvu/203

 only to a selection from it, ‘similar to that which our transatlantic brethren call a caucus’ (ib. 3rd ser. v. 1170). He signed, as Penshurst, Lord Mansfield's protest against the Reform Bill (ib. xiii. 376), and corresponded with Wellington on that bill and on foreign affairs. On 28 Feb. 1828 he sent Wellington a memorial recommending an English guarantee of the Asiatic dominions of Turkey as the most likely measure to bring her to an accommodation (Wellington Corresp. iv. 286–7).

Strangford's taste for literature remained with him to the end. His intimate friends included Croker and Moore, and he was a frequent guest at Rogers's table. In his later years he was a constant visitor to the British Museum and state paper office, and frequently contributed to the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ and to ‘Notes and Queries.’ He was elected F.S.A. in February 1825, and was a director of the society and one of its vice-presidents from 1852 to 1854. In 1834 he published in Portuguese, French, and English the ‘Letter of a Portuguese Nobleman on the Execution of Anne Boleyn,’ and in 1847 edited for the Camden Society (Camden Miscellany, vol. ii.) ‘Household Expenses of the Princess Elizabeth during her Residence at Hatfield, October 1551–September 1552.’ He also collected materials for a life of Endymion Porter. He was created D.C.L. at Oxford on 10 June 1834, at the installation of Wellington as Chancellor. He was also a grandee of Portugal and a knight of the Hanoverian Order (G.C.H.).

Strangford died at his house in Harley Street, London, on 29 May 1855. He was buried at Ashford. An anonymous portrait belonged in 1867 to his second son (Cat. Third Loan Exhib. No. 214). He married, on 17 June 1817, Ellen, youngest daughter of Sir Thomas Burke, bart., of Marble Hill, Galway, and widow of Nicholas Browne, esq. She died on 26 May 1826. Two of his sons, George [q. v.] and Percy [q. v.], succeeded in turn to his titles, and both are separately noticed.

[Burke's Extinct Peerage, 1883; Foster's Peerage and Alumni Oxon.; Lodge's Genealogy of the Peerage; Lodge's Peerage of Ireland, iv. 274–80, contains serious genealogical errors. Also Pearman's Hist. of Ashford, pp. 45–7, 79–82; Gent. Mag. 1855, ii. 90, 114; Ann. Reg. (App. to Chron.) pp. 277–8; Moore's Memoirs, i. 125, iii. 138, 356, iv. 313, v. 188, 279, viii. 225; Stapleton's Political Life of Canning, chapters iv. and xii.; Castlereagh Corresp. xii. 127, 144, 153; Wellington Corresp. vols. ii. iii. iv. passim; Parl. Debates, 2nd and 3rd ser. passim. Brit. Mus. Cat.; O'Donoghue's Poets of Ireland; Croker Papers, iii. 128, 296–297, 343–4, 361, 399–400; S. Walpole's Hist. of England from 1815, iii. 89–92, iv. 40–1.]

 SMYTHE, PERCY ELLEN FREDERICK WILLIAM, eighth of Ireland, and third  of the United Kingdom (1826–1869), philologist and ethnologist, born at St. Petersburg on 26 Nov. 1826, was third and youngest son of Percy Clinton Sydney Smythe, sixth Viscount [q. v.], and younger brother of George Augustus Frederick Percy Sydney Smythe, seventh Viscount [q. v.] During part of his youth he was almost blind. From the first he devoted himself to the study of languages. At Harrow he taught himself Persian, and at Oxford he learnt Arabic. He matriculated from Merton College on 17 June 1843, and held a postmastership for two years. In May 1845 he was nominated by the vice-chancellor one of the two student-attachés at Constantinople. He became paid attaché there in 1849, and was oriental secretary from July 1857 to October 1858. He gave assiduous attention to his official duties, and his health suffered severely from the strain of work entailed by the Crimean war. Meanwhile he acquired a complete knowledge of Turkish and modern Greek, made a thorough study of Sanskrit, and mastered every branch of oriental philology. He spoke Persian and Greek with facility, and was versed in their dialects. To all this he added a considerable acquaintance with Celtic, competent classical scholarship, and a strong taste for geography and ethnology.

On his accession to the peerage on his brother's death in 1857 Strangford took a house in London, but mainly continued for four years in Constantinople, where he lived the life of a dervish. In 1863 he travelled in Austria and Albania, widening his knowledge and strengthening his interest in the eastern question. He described his own position with regard to it as anti-φιλελλην, but pro-φιλoρωμαιος, and thought that the future of south-eastern Europe belonged to the Bulgarians rather than to the Greeks. He proclaimed himself a liberal, but took no interest in general politics. He considered Lord Stratford de Redcliffe ‘absurdly overrated.’ His letters showed the liveliest sense of humour, as well as exact and varied scholarship. He was a frequent contributor to the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ and the ‘Saturday Review,’ but published no book during his lifetime. He wrote, however, the last three chapters of his wife's ‘Eastern Shores of the Adriatic.’ In 1869 two volumes of his ‘Selected Writings’ were edited by Lady