Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 58.djvu/140

 lands in the Cartier-Macdonald administration, and held office for four years. During this time he established the system of selling townships en bloc, and opened up some of the best colonial roads. He also acted as leader of the conservative government in the legislative council or upper house of Canada. In 1862 he was appointed chancellor of Ontario or Upper Canada, which office he held till his death, having declined the office of chief justice which Macdonald made him in 1868. Vankoughnet died at Toronto on 7 Nov. 1869. He was a close political and personal friend of [q. v.], but made his way chiefly through his own abilities. He was a forcible and fluent speaker, and an able lawyer. Vankoughnet married, in November 1845, Elizabeth, daughter of Colonel Barker Turner, by whom he had two sons.

[Burke's Colonial Gentry, vol. ii.; Morgan's Sketches of Celebrated Canadians, 1862, pp. 615–17; Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography; Times, 10 Nov. 1869; Pope's Memoirs of Sir J. A. Macdonald, i. 157, 201, 203–4, 233, ii. 74–5. See also an article on S. J. Vankoughnet, founded upon family documents, in Rose's Cyclopædia of Canadian Biography, 1888.]  VAN LAUN, HENRI (1820–1896), author and translator, born in Holland in 1820, was educated in France. He settled permanently in England in 1848, and at first sought fortune as a journalist, but after a brief experience he preferred the less precarious business of teaching. He was successively French master at King William's College, Isle of Man, at Cheltenham College, and the Edinburgh Academy. Settling afterwards in London, he acted for twenty consecutive years as examiner in French for the civil service commission and for the war office. His first publication, ‘A Grammar of the French Language’ (3 vols. 1863–1864), was followed by ‘Selections from Modern French Authors’ (3 vols. 1869–88). In 1871 appeared his translation of his friend Taine's ‘History of English Literature.’ This work was first issued in Edinburgh in two volumes. It ran through four or five editions, and was then issued in four volumes (London, 1886, 8vo). Van Laun's translation of the ‘Dramatic Works’ of Molière was published in 6 vols. at Edinburgh in 1875–6, 8vo, with illustrations by Lalauze. It embodies much curious information, derived from Langbaine and other sources, concerning seventeenth and eighteenth century translations of, and plagiarisms from, separate plays, acknowledged or unacknowledged. Van Laun's own ‘History of French Literature’ appeared in three volumes (London, 1876–7, 8vo), and was reprinted in 1883. He next published his ‘French Revolutionary Epoch,’ (2 vols. London, 1878, 8vo), being a history of France from the beginning of the first Revolution to the end of the Second Empire. He contributed a ‘Notice of the Life and Works of Motteux’ to Lockhart's revised edition of Pierre Antoine Motteux's English translation of Cervantes's ‘Don Quixote’ which appeared in four volumes (London, 1880–1, 8vo). Van Laun next published ‘The Characters of La Bruyère, newly rendered into English’ (London, 1885, 8vo). His last work was a translation of ‘The Adventures of Gil Blas’ from the French of Le Sage (3 vols. London, 1886, 8vo).

Van Laun was a competent translator, and was widely read in English dramatic literature, but his original essays in literary history were valueless compilations. He was for some years confidential adviser to Mr. John C. Nimmo, the publisher, of London. He died at his residence in Ladbroke Gardens, London, on 19 Jan. 1896.

[Times, 21 and 22 Jan. 1896; Athenæum, 25 Jan. 1896, p. 120; Annual Register, 1896, ii. 136.]  VAN LEEMPUT, REMIGIUS (1609?–1675), painter, born at Antwerp about 1609, was received into the guild of St. Luke there in 1628–9. He came to England in Charles I's reign, and among other works for that king he made a small copy in oils of the famous painting by Holbein at Whitehall of Henry VII, Henry VIII, and their queens, which was afterwards destroyed by fire; Van Leemput's copy is now at Hampton Court. He was one of the purchasers at the sale of King Charles's collection, and among his purchases was the great picture of Charles I on horseback, by Van Dyck (now at Windsor), which was recovered from him with some difficulty at the Restoration. M. Remy or Remée, as he was usually called by his contemporaries, was a well-known and skilful copyist of pictures. He copied many portraits by Van Dyck, and told Sir Peter Lely that he could copy his portraits better than Lely could himself. He copied Raphael's ‘Galatea’ for the Earl of Pomfret at Easton Neston. Van Leemput died in 1675, and on 9 Nov. was buried in St. Paul's, Covent Garden, where a son of his, Charles Van Leemput, had been interred on 19 Sept. 1651. His daughter also practised painting, and married Thomas Streater, a nephew of [q. v.] Van Leemput had a well-chosen collection of pictures and