Dictionary.net

An English poet and man of letters; born at Plymouth, Jan. 18, 1840. Intended for a civil engineer, and educated abroad, he accepted a place under the Board of Trade. His poems are inimitable in their artistic finish and grace of fancy. They are contained in the volumes: "Vignettes in Rhyme and Vers de Societe" (1873); "Proverbs in Porcelain" (1877): "Old-World Idyls" (1883); "Eighteenth-Century Vignettes" (1892). He has written biographies of Hogarth, Fielding, Steele, Goldsmith, and other literary notables, and contributed many articles to the English "Dictionary of National Biography".