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 “Hushed.” “Newgate, Committed for Trial,” a very sad and telling piece, first attested the breaking down of the painter’s health in 1878. In this year he was elected A.R.A., and exhibited “The Gifts of the Fairies,” “The Daughter of the House,” “Absconded,” and a very fine portrait of Samuel Cousins, the mezzotint engraver. This last canvas is a masterpiece, and deserved the success which attended the print engraved from it. Holl was overwhelmed with commissions, which he would not decline. The consequences of this strain upon a constitution which was never strong were more or less, though unequally, manifest in “Ordered to the Front,” a soldier’s departure (1880); “Home Again,” its sequel, in 1883 (after which he was made R.A.). In 1886 he produced a portrait of Millais as his diploma work, but his health rapidly declined and he died at Hampstead, on the 31st of July 1888. Holl’s better portraits, being of men of rare importance, attest the commanding position he occupied in the branch of art he so unflinchingly followed. They include likenesses of Lord Roberts, painted for queen Victoria (1882); the prince of Wales, Lord Dufferin, the duke of Cleveland (1885); Lord Overstone, Mr Bright, Mr Gladstone, Mr Chamberlain, Sir J. Tenniel, Earl Spencer, Viscount Cranbrook, and a score of other important subjects.

HOLLAND, CHARLES (1733–1769), English actor, was born in Chiswick, the son of a baker. He made his first appearance on the stage in the title rôle of Oroonoko at Drury Lane in 1755, John Palmer, Richard Yates and Mrs Cibber being in the cast. He played under Garrick, and was the original Florizel in the latter’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale. Garrick thought highly of him, and wrote a eulogistic epitaph for his monument in Chiswick church.

His nephew, Charles Holland (1768–1849) was also an actor, who played with Mrs Siddons and Kean.

HOLLAND, SIR HENRY, (1788–1873), English physician and author, was born at Knutsford, Cheshire, on the 27th of October 1788. His maternal grandmother was the sister of Josiah Wedgwood, whose grandson was Charles Darwin; and his paternal aunt was the mother of Mrs Gaskell. After spending some years at a private school at Knutsford, he was sent to a school at Newcastle-on-Tyne, whence after four years he was transferred to Dr J. P. Estlin’s school near Bristol. There he at once took the position of head boy, in succession to John Cam Hobhouse, afterwards Lord Broughton, an honour which required to be maintained by physical prowess. On leaving school he became articled clerk to a mercantile firm in Liverpool, but, as the privilege was reserved to him of passing two sessions at Glasgow university, he at the close of his second session sought relief from his articles, and in 1806 began the study of medicine in the university of Edinburgh, where he graduated in 1811. After several years spent in foreign travel, he began practice in 1816 as a physician in London—according to his own statement, “with a fair augury of success speedily and completely fulfilled.” This “success,” he adds, “was materially aided by visits for four successive years to Spa, at the close of that which is called the London season.” It must also, however, be in a great degree attributed to his happy temperament and his gifts as a conversationalist—qualities the influence of which, in the majority of cases belonging to his class of practice, is often of more importance than direct medical treatment. In 1816 he was elected F.R.S., and in 1828 F.R.C.S. He became physician in ordinary to Prince Albert in 1840, and was appointed in 1852 physician in ordinary to the queen. In April 1853 he was created a baronet. He was also a D.C.L. of Oxford and a member of the principal learned societies of Europe. He was twice married, his second wife being a daughter of Sydney Smith, a lady of considerable literary talent, who published a biography of her father. Sir Henry Holland at an early period of his practice resolved to devote to his professional duties no more of his time than was necessary to secure an income of £5000 a year, and also to spend two months of every year solely in foreign travel. By the former resolution he secured leisure for a wide acquaintance with general literature, and for a more than superficial cultivation of several branches of science; and the latter enabled him, besides visiting, “and most of them repeatedly, every country of Europe,” to make extensive tours in the other three continents, journeying often to places little frequented by European travellers. As, moreover, he procured an introduction to nearly all the eminent personages in his line of travel, and knew many of them in his capacity of physician, his acquaintance with “men and cities” was of a species without a parallel. The London Medical Record, in noticing his death, which took place on his eighty-fifth birthday, October 27, 1873, remarked that it “had occurred under circumstances highly characteristic of his remarkable career.” On his return from a journey in Russia he was present, on Friday, October 24th, at the trial of Marshal Bazaine in Paris, dining with some of the judges in the evening. He reached London on the Saturday, took ill the following day, and died quietly on the Monday afternoon.

Sir Henry Holland was the author of General View of the Agriculture of Cheshire (1807); Travels in the Ionian Isles, Albania, Thessaly and Greece (1812–1813, 2nd ed., 1819); Medical Notes and Reflections (1839); Chapters on Mental Physiology (1852); Essays on Scientific and other Subjects contributed to the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews (1862); and Recollections of Past Life (1872).

HOLLAND, HENRY FOX, (1705–1774), English statesman, second son of Sir Stephen Fox, was born on the 28th of September 1705. Inheriting a large share of the riches which his father had accumulated, he squandered it soon after attaining his majority, and went to the Continent to escape from his creditors. There he made the acquaintance of a countrywoman of fortune, who became his patroness and was so lavish with her purse that, after several years’ absence, he was in a position to return home and, in 1735, to enter parliament as member for Hindon in Wiltshire. He became the favourite pupil and devoted supporter of Sir Robert Walpole, achieving unequalled and unenviable proficiency in the worst political arts of his master and model. As a speaker he was fluent and self-possessed, imperturbable under attack, audacious in exposition or retort, and able to hold his own against Pitt himself. Thus he made himself a power in the House of Commons and an indispensable member of several administrations. He was surveyor-general of works from 1737 to 1742, was member for Windsor from 1741 to 1761; lord of the treasury in 1743, secretary at war and member of the privy council in 1746, and in 1755 became leader of the House of Commons, secretary of state and a member of the cabinet under the duke of Newcastle. In 1757, in the rearrangements of the government, Fox was ultimately excluded from the cabinet, and given the post of paymaster of the forces. During the war, which Pitt conducted with extraordinary vigour, and in which the nation was intoxicated with glory, Fox devoted himself mainly to accumulating a vast fortune. In 1762 he again accepted the leadership of the House, with a seat in the cabinet, under the earl of Bute, and exercised his skill in cajolery and corruption to induce the House of Commons to approve of the treaty of Paris of 1763; as a recompense, he was raised to the House of Lords with the title of Baron Holland of Foxley, Wiltshire, on the 16th of April 1763. In 1765 he was forced to resign the paymaster generalship, and four years later a petition of the livery of the city of London against the ministers referred to him as “the public defaulter of unaccounted millions.” The proceedings brought against him in the court of exchequer were stayed by a royal warrant; and in a statement published by him he proved that in the delays in making up the accounts of his office he had transgressed neither the law nor the custom of the time. From the interest on the outstanding balances he had, none the less, amassed a princely fortune. He strove, but in vain, to obtain promotion to the dignity of an earl, a dignity upon which he had set his heart, and he died at Holland House, Kensington, on the 1st of July 1774, a sorely disappointed man, with a reputation for cunning and unscrupulousness which cannot easily be matched, and with an unpopularity which justifies the conclusion that he was the most thoroughly hated statesman of his day. Lord Holland married in 1744