Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 55.djvu/279

 [q. v.], by his wife Harriet, eldest daughter of James Sykes of Leatherhead. He gave great intellectual promise, though associated with an incapacity for abstractions and a delight in the concrete betokening the future historian and the artist which he became rather than the thinker which he would have liked to be. At Harrow, whither he was sent in May 1854, he took little or no share in the school games, read with monotonous assiduity, but without the success commensurate with his ability, held aloof until his last year from boys of his own age, and became painfully shy. At Balliol, where he matriculated in 1858, his beginnings were not altogether promising; but soon, under the personal influence of Conington and Jowett, and of a host of friends whom his attractive personality brought about him, he made rapid progress and gained brilliant distinction, obtaining a double first class in classics, the Newdigate prize for a poem on ‘The Escorial’ (Oxford, 1860, 12mo), and an open fellowship at Magdalen College (27 Oct. 1862, after a failure at Queen's). Next spring he won one of the chancellor's prizes for an English essay upon ‘The Renaissance’ (Oxford, 1863, 8vo). The mental toil required by these achievements and still more mental restlessness and introspection impaired his health, developing the consumptive tendencies inherent in his mother's family. Six months after his success at Magdalen he broke down altogether. Suffering from impaired sight and irritability of the brain, he sought refuge in Switzerland, and spent the winter in Italy. On 16 Aug. 1864 he exchanged betrothal rings on the summit of Piz Languard with Janet Catherine North, sister of Marianne North [q. v.] They were married on 10 Nov. at St. Clement's Church, Hastings. He settled in Albion Street, London, and afterwards at 47 Norfolk Square, where his eldest child, Janet, was born on 22 Oct. 1865. He began to study law, but soon found that this vocation suited neither his taste nor his health. The symptoms of pulmonary disease became more pronounced, and he was obliged to spend the greater part of several years on the continent, visiting the Riviera, Tuscany, Normandy (1867), and Corsica (1868). At length, in November 1868, he settled near his father at Victoria Square, Clifton, and devoted himself deliberately to a literary life.

Symonds had already, in intervals of comparative health, contributed papers to the ‘Cornhill Magazine’ and other periodicals; some of these, with other essays, were collected and published in 1874, under the title of ‘Sketches in Italy and Greece’ (London, 8vo, 2nd edit. 1879). Further travel papers were collected in ‘Sketches and Studies in Italy’ (London, 1879) and in ‘Italian Byways’ (London, 1883, 8vo). His excellent ‘Introduction to the Study of Dante’ (London, 1872, 8vo; 2nd edit. 1890, French version by Auger) was the result of lectures to a ladies' college at Clifton, and other lectures delivered at Clifton College produced his ‘Studies of the Greek Poets’ in two series (1873 and 1876, both three editions). He edited the literary remains of his father, who died in 1871, and in the following year performed the same pious office for those of Conington, whom, after Jowett, he always considered his chief intellectual benefactor. In the spring of 1873 he visited Sicily and Greece. With returning health his literary ambition rekindled. The first volume of the history of the ‘Renaissance in Italy,’ ‘The Age of the Despots,’ appeared in 1875 (2nd edit. 1880). ‘It was,’ he says, ‘entirely rewritten from lectures, and the defect of the method is clearly observable in its structure.’ The second and third volumes, ‘The Revival of Learning’ (1877 and 1882) and ‘The Fine Arts’ (1877 and 1882; Italian version by Santarelli, 1879), were composed in a different fashion, with great injury to the author's health, which compelled him to work principally abroad. He gave three lectures at the Royal Institution in February 1877 upon ‘Florence and the Medici,’ and then, after a tour in Lombardy, when he began translating the sonnets of Michael Angelo and Campanella, he returned in June to Clifton; there he broke down with violent hæmorrhage from the lungs.

Symonds left England with the intention of proceeding to Egypt, but, stopping almost by accident at Davos Platz, derived so much benefit from the air during the winter 1877–8 that he determined to make that then little known resort his home. Symonds contributed his experiences in an attractive article to the ‘Fortnightly’ of July 1878. The essay powerfully stimulated the formation of English colonies not only at Davos but elsewhere in the Engadine, and it formed the nucleus of an interesting series of chapters on Alpine subjects, collected in ‘Our Life in the Swiss Highlands’ (London, 1891, 8vo; five of the papers were by his third daughter, Margaret).

From 1878 Symonds spent the greater part of his life at Davos. On 20 Sept. 1882 he settled in a house which he had built during the summer of 1881, and named Am Hof. The change was in many ways highly advantageous to him, especially as it gave him a more definite outlet for the charitable in-